Comptrollers

Morning after the twentieth anniversary of environemental activist Ken Saro-Wiwa's murder

Did you just say why do the heathens rage?

My head is a woven reed of traffic laws
but my legs on the pedals seem to be saying
today is not the day.

Perched as I am on this wheel, slanting
through the streets like a swift onrush. I'm at
Kibbo junction, where the road arrows towards
Kaura Beach when I slit open and I'm struck by
what has wedged itself in me since the night;
why my eyes tear as though they know things
I do not know; why my legs are like vengeance
on the pedals; why there
is a prophet on my stereo making fire:
I don't wanna I don't wanna I don't wanna wait in vein

Across the tamarisks men and young men
bunch around newsstands, flailing their hands,
arguing hilosophy in rehearsed curses. The women
hold children by the hands and make for church
where they silently pray that their
sons will not grow up to be this tarnished
nation of themselves.

I slit open and I'm struck by what has wedged
itself in me since the night;
why his sky was a nation of the nights; why beneath
the bridge the water ponders itself, ponders the bile of
black in its loins; why Abulu, village minstrel, village mad head
prowls by the beach. His eyes taut and raw like songs
that are not of redemption, his voice hoarse from shouting.
HIs only congregation being himself and the shore stones
as he sermonizes his rage against the iniquitous sea:
I don't wanna I don't wanna I don't wanna wait in vain!