Morning Star (for Ayòdélé Eagles Ìbíyemí)

 

Ayodele Eagles

I

Feisty bird of flapping feathers

king in the congress of aves:

you are Eagle! Your brawny hips,

your sturdy claws have toured

you round the lunar year

of another blessed age again

so you can soar above the galaxy

above the rain and its rain-bow;

so your voice can re-sound deep down

like echo travelling with fright of freedom.

II

From Ìkirè I stand on the moon

of your birth telling the tale of

your heroic arrival. They say you are crimson

-an ember clad in colour of scarlet

some say black -a coal coated in colour of darkness

but I say no:

your garment is that of green, colour

singing the anthem of liberty and hope

who then says our land has not got a warrior

as intrepid as lion, fighting the course to victory?

Ayodele, you are the moving train of lights

your heart is the canterbury of holy grails

you are the sage of season, buffalo feasting

on the bows of bulls

you are the griot of Sahara

your rhetoric the mantra of holy apostles

calling drunk mortals away from their shamed Babylon.

Eagles @ CD

III

From the womb of your mother

you've tamed knowledge to your heart

; tamed the truth to your belly

you've found fecundity, father of all

you've swallowed the sacred egg of wisdom,

now you are god whom from the heavy arm

of his lore the sun of new dawn rises

men called man, if every month can come

with crescent of your birth

I will make my saliva a libation

at the shrine of your beowulf being

so the day of my fame can be long.