(A Dreamside Exchange With NIYI OSUNDARE At 75)
Chiedu Ezeanah:
Deluged by the Katrina, Proteus mounts
the roof and calls out to the waves:
The Sea is too much with us, wild with the hurricanes…
The waves swell and alter, diffract and refract.
Tender moments twist and turn, wean an elixir.
Sea-horses of frozen tales, hulks of spent totems,
mutate into moonsongs pitched to dance with us.
His song says the market has more than one entrance
to restore broken eggs of the words of the world.
Village-born, Village-bred, the Village silences speak with his voice.
City-taught,City-wise,he has swum out of the City’s hurricanes.
He has tied all their waves of dreams to heal ages.
Proteus is hounded by the tide. Altered Proteus alters
the tide.Tide after tide,a gentle tide alters us…
NIYI OSUNDARE:
Seasoning my tongue in bursts of song
a raindrop swims between my lips.
Thirsts swell out of this tiny water.
Thirsts run riot like this city in anger.
Thirsts roar in rushes of wraths.
Ah! My tongue, trough of toppled waters.
Ah!My heart, imbibe and hoard and share
this noon’s liquid crossings
in lyric’s intercourse with intercourses
treeing in my tongue like a green river.
Let this green hour feed the air
with poetry that returns
rains to the wilted flower
song to the inhuman hour…
*From SOLAR ELEGIES,(Book 1 of The Tristia Trilogy) a forthcoming collection due out in the first quarter of 2023
