A Poet On The Prowl. Poem by Tony Adah

This morning
I have been on the prowl
For a good poem
Waves come unseen
Their ripples breaking
In my ear
And I spontaneously
Do an assemblage of words-
Make a bird fly
Noisily like an aeroplane
And make an aeroplane
Fly silently like a bird.
Where can I get
A good one?
I pause
Listening to the silent sound
Telling me about some tired
Market women sorting whole fruits
From their perishable lot
And of farmers
Years bent upon the earth
Toiling with the hoe
Their ageless valued gift.
I see teachers praying
Waiting for their reward
Here on earth
As they mill chalk into dust
On an obsolete blackboard,
Their pupils assemling bricks
As writing tables
In the twenty first century.
To the window pane
I peer through
Reading the writing thereupon
Telling me about masons
Putting mortar on the growing walls
Of the affluent
And of others mixing cement, sand and water
While some still
Wearing a pad of spent cement papers
On their balding head
Lifting concrete to the masons.
When I am told
That lunch is ready
Of roasted yams and peppered palm oil
I look at that direction
And I see armoured cars
Rolling on my pieces of yam,
On the palm oil
I see the militants rowing their boats on its Surface going on a mission
To steal black gold.
It is evening
A bowl of pounded yam
And bitterleaf soup awaits me
A horde of beggars abandoning the streets
Come swarming at me
Usurping my rolled lumps of pounded yam.
Then a wave of sanity alights
Before I get to bed
And I ask myself
Does the poet eat not?
As sleep lulls me in
I see ebullient men
With short necks and pudgy fingers
Sitting on barrels of black gold.
On the other side
I see melancholy written
On the faces of famished children
Faintly playing in the sand
Their faces expressionless
Battered by their fatherland
And wishing to get back
Into their mother's womb.
Beside them
Mothers sit expectantly
Rocking the lapped children to sleep
Children whose future
Anybody's guess can
Be as good as mine.
Then somnolence died and resurrected
Into a slumber
And a snoring poet
Lives only in his dreams.