Ìkọ́kọrẹ́ #Water-yam Porridge

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Ìkọ́kọrẹ́
WATER-YAM PORRIDGE
by Samuel Oyin Oludipe

In the sedate corners of the swamp
We shall have entrails of ruptured
Shells, marking the apartheid of battered
Graves, a blanket of sweetened flesh
Rinsed in invocation of seasons to
Grace the deity tongue. In every corner,
A humid tempest shall ground itself
Against a debris of tendril bones, treasure trove;
Half-sinking, half-revelling , yet in bond
With Time's passage, together with every
Ruin she shall reincarnate into Ruby

In every corner, lukewarm processions shall
Spin in peppery torrents, and rigid tribe
Of the root shall be cast unto the truth of life
But then, the raging question: shan't a world
Dislodge itself when it wishes so? Shan't the
Spice of life be willing conjugations ?
Not seems that rent the rind or leave a flame ?
Yet the pot shall melt the crowd in crisis of taste, And the ladies lunge to crush the sovereign lump,
Decreeing, diversity is the grime of life !
Diversity is the crime of breath!

Alas, Ìkọ́kọrẹ́ is supple earth, shapeless
Void, whose watery deeps baptize all :
As the wateryam, wholly earthed , denied
Of light, in fossilled depths , denied
Of right, denied of left.

So let fish be ripped from head to tail
For fish's sake; the tusk of aged salt
Impaled for essence intense ; let tuber
Be carved to extinction, like the vassals
Of Ancient Rome; its skeleton drowned
By water from the rivers of Babylon
Let pepper roam the swamp as fugitive
From a nervous land , and exiled limbs
Of chicken and snail heave a signpost for
The forbidden of the earth. In those
Sedate corners , a strange justice shall
Ascend, and Ìkọ́kọrẹ́ shall be served.

Samuel Oyin Oludipe is an alumnus of El-Bossaa College @el-bossaa-schs He won the Christopher Okigbo Poetry Prize in 2016. He is an auditor at Expound and a columnist at Praxis. He is also the Chief Editor of El-Bossaa Writers Club E.W.C.