Whose palms—
tell me—whose palms
kneaded the clay of dawn
and lifted suns into stone?

Whose mother's blood
rose, hardened,
stood upright—
breasted into pyramids—whose?

Speak.

The pyramids—
who suckled their shadows
on the black milk of the earth?

Who planted their ribs
in the mute throat of my sweat,
in the bitter grammar
of my brow—who?

Whose ancestors,
spines bent into question marks,
were taught by the whip
to write history
on their own salted backs?

Who weeded the cloves of blood
that sweetened the tongue of
Zanzibar—whose?

Whose great-great-grandfather
weeded the cloves of blood
that watered the soil of Zanzibar?

Answer me.

Whose bodies floated,
face-up like broken mirrors,
on the salted amnesia of oceans—whose?

Whose tongue sang psalms
into the wrinkled face of Babylon,
lullabies of civilisation stitched
with gunpowder and teeth—
whose mourning was that music?

Which genius, unnamed, unburied,
from the black halls of servitude,
wrists shackled to centuries,
balanced the trembling spine of the world
upon his shoulders—
Held the ancient worlds
on their shoulders—
lifted the glories of imperial Rome—which?

and held—
held—
held—

the fevered hallucination of empires,
lifted Rome
like a drunk god
from dust into dominion—
whose hands dared that godhood?

Say it.

They will say:
your black palms.

My palms—

my black cracked constellations,
drought-beaten maps of forgotten gods,
lumps
that burned without oil
of apology
at the frontline of progress.

My palms—
the lamps
of learning in the vanguard of progress...

I am the wick,
the wound
that gave it light.

White flecks erupted
from the black fire of my skin—
ash or angels—
no history could tell.

White specks from black fires,
storks of the winds,
unfolded scrolls of good tidings—
Wind smuggled them,
thin-winged messengers,
preaching the wind sermons—
writing me into shrines
of strange tongues
that could not pronounce my name.

A direct divination of myself—

I climbed.

I climbed the iron spine of progress,
its long body tightening
its alphabet around my breath.
Climb the great train of progress,
a python...

I cough verses
that invoke the spirit of Christopher Okigbo
reciting the rosary of funeral dirges
in the plantation of fermented incantatory
rhythms,

Niyi Osundare—

Ah, what heaps of praise poems
have we fermented this dawn
of the new day?

Go forth,
Let Tchicaya U Tam'si know
I, too, drink fire, the mystic spirit
of the sleeping predecessors…

I spit this poem
into the pots of relics of the gods
of Kongo and Mwanamutapa
on the lactating breasts of Timbuktu
my ancestors sang to,
the lullabies that quieted suns.

I crossed in overloaded canoes,
my ribs arguing with water,
my dreams leaking
into a wind drunk on departure—
Overloaded canoes
bursting in the flowering wind—

until...

time cracked its knuckles,
and a voice older than thunder
summoned me:

My son—

O my son, O my son!
Let me remind you:

Do you not know?

It is your blood—
your black, unburied argument—
that fell from your dismantled back,
that baptised these rivers,
that fattened the fields of men
into obscene abundance.

It is your blood, your black blood
that rained from your bleeding bent black back,
that poured these rivers of blood
that irrigate the fields of men.

I stood still.

The world ate without prayer.

And now—

roll up your bed of sorrow—
Fold your borrowed dreams—
Gather your scattered name
from the mouths that chewed it.

Roll up your dying bed,
pack it—
Go home.

Go home—
back home,
where I buried your umbilical cord.