Collected Poems

and thriving cities dissolve

in sudden mirages

and the ready-reckoners at court

will calculate their gain

and our loss, and make us

any-number-of-million-they-like strong!

Flying

(for Niyi Osundare)

Something in altitude kindles power-thirst

Mere horse-height suffices the emir

Bestowing from rich folds of prodigious turban

Upon crawling peasants in the dust

Rare imperceptible nods enwrapped

In princely boredom.

I too have known

A parching of that primordial palate,

A quickening to manifest life

Of a long recessive appetite.

Though strapped and manacled

That day I commanded from the pinnacle

Of a three-tiered world a bridge befitting

The proud deranged deity I had become.

A magic rug of rushing clouds

Billowed and rubbed its white softness

Like practiced houri fingers on my sole

And through filters of its gauzy fabric

Revealed wonders of a metropolis

Magic-struck to fairyland proportions.

By different adjustments of vision

I caused the clouds to float