Arinke

I

The night was warmly silent

And the colourful birds asleep

On the tree below which the blue river flows

And the rabbits in their corner cages

Savoring slowly the sugared supper served

When you freely pledged me your eternal being

And we joyfully drank excessively

From the intoxicating ocean of love.

II

Oya, keep that smile

Hold it there

Let the whole world behold it

On your face its abode made

Your face?

That perfection of creation

With contours that form just right

And features that make nonsense

Of the brilliance of Da Vinci

The sight of which transfixed me

In the cold room of that signal weak café

Where we met and destiny was made

For all eternity

III

And she said yes, I will

Just like in the Ulysses of crazy Joyce

And with that my love

Gingered me with her scintillating chord

Oiled me on, to weave for her

Steamy verses of unalloyed devotion

For a darling deposition on her person,

And rhymed rendition on her soul-

Beautiful baskets of lasting joy.

IV

We didn’t plan to change the world

No. We do not want to alter their way

We just wish to reap where we sowed

Viable seeds of rightful love

And drink from the well we doggedly dug,

Uninhibitedly, unlimitedly, unconstrainedly…

Without a single strand of remorse nor of regret,

Without induced acrimony or man-made struggle,

Honeyed water of entitled happiness.

IV

Calculate the distance between now and then

Can you estimate the time between then and now?

Do you even know what then really is?

And what in Einstein’s name is our now?

Are you mystified yet? Perhaps confused?

That’s our love; mystifying those who refuse to see.

This talk of time and length; of size and things

This jumbled discourse of right and wrong; of norms and its dislikes

Are as relative as the skin of the sky

Is it blue to you or white today?

Perhaps it is black in Blackpool

Or parsimoniously brown in Braga

Who knows for physics sureness?

Who cares for description reasons?

We see what we allow our senses

And so our love, my dear

Is what it is: Love.

Of which we have little control over

People will see what they see

Reasons and cries change no human heart fixed.

V

Dear brother,

In your last mail you questioned

Who it was that swept me away

Like Sahara transports the weightless sands

And feeble pebbles for mansions in Maiduguri

And the way maiden Juliet hijacked Romeo in the old books

It could be likened to Galileo’s shock to the Roman church:

This is the reply, kid-brother,

Relish it like those dawn cherries we gleefully chewed.

Aburo,

Rays of light we were schooled

Are of differing spectra of wavelengths

All converging to give the illumination we enjoy

And in that illustrating light

You will see Arinke, the timely princess God gifted

With her several spectra of perfect lines

All in incredible consonance and peerless perfection

Portraying a fineness so profound inside as outside

I wouldn’t lie to you, Jibola

Adedoyin is the epitome of all things graceful

Radiating magnificence like the great Eiffel tower

Should I tell you of a construction so breathtaking

In its utter completeness and sterile faultlessness

And attention so absolute to all engaged details?

Should I tell you of this enviable monument?

**The names in this poem are fictitious (or so the poet would have us believe)

                                                September, 2012.