The Piano and Drums by Gabriel Okara
When at break of day at a riverside
I hear jungle drums telegraphing
the mystic rhythm, urgent, raw
like bleeding flesh, speaking of
primal youth and the beginning,
I see panther snarling about to leap
8 and the hunters crunched with spears poised;
And my blood ripples, turns torrent,
topple the years and at once I’m
in my mother’s laps a suckling;
at once I’m walking simple
paths with no innovations,
rugged, fashioned with the naked
warmth of hurrying feet and groping hearts
16 in green leaves and wild flowers pulsing.
Then I hear a wailing piano
Solo speaking of complex ways
in tear-furrowed concerts
on far away lands
and new horizons with
coaxing diminuendo, counterpoint,
crescendo. But lost in the labyrinth of its complexities,
it ends in the middle
25 of a phrase at a dagger point.
And I lost in the morning mist
of an age at a riverside keep
wandering in the mystic rhythm
29 of jungle drums and the concerto.
– The Piano and Drums by Gabriel Okara
