Ode On the Clan's Iroko Tree

(for: them who are ever there!) these branches and roots that cord to the grave ancients should be free from man’s swords! both oracle and priest held for days … I Your voice speaks in the silence of the night To the deep still shady earth That once held a great zest for our childhood Here in the once thick wooded land Where progenitors strewed their rustic huts Yes! where, sang tho’ unseen those sonorous kin-spirits. 2 Ah! Happy and keen folks were the ancients, then; But their sons? what a sad lot, now! even Demented hearts aching from those drinks of dizzy times Raw anguish, sorrow, painful hemlocks of death-lines, The slow songs that tune softly to the mirthful graves That still hold the ancestors like prisoners in the wild caves. 3 O! for your unravished wave of primal welcome, That bade the sonorous weaver come To make loud greeting of blue azure with song-fleet O! for such uudecoded song that for the sagging flesh bear ointment Secret balm from the rhyming unsteady palm leaves of the winds That flute clearly to ancestors those eternal silent songs. 4 Known are those festal spirits of your night From whom many lives readily spring forth: Mused thru’ the voices of strong mortal compeers – Priests, priestesses, praise-singers, warriors, dancers! That with gusto, flounder across the space of time; O, for those festal moments of flush! o, for the celestial clime! 5 You are the unseen bridge of the world, Like Nturukpa, that elder amongst our ferry trees; Your bark exhumes the bright colours of the past; And carried thru’ the festal wings of your night We desire to be mused to the ethereal clime; Of uncurbed equanimity and euphoria of the divine. 6 I now know the anguish of these festal spirits Who take refuge on the water-void banks Of the topmost branches and leaves; I now know the noise of their feasts in sacrifices: Doleful sacrifices in the gods’ swollen foot! Then adieu! adieu! from the cloyed humans in advent! 7 O farewell! with all your festal spirits, Who coaxed to the night of sacrifices, priests, Priestesses, dancers, praise-singers, warriors of the land; Adieu! with these cold celebrations and coax-throated songs heard, Thru’ the voice and echoes of rain’s thunder, In the day of the panther and his noble twin, the hunter.