Piano and Drums By Gabriel Okara

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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 the panther ready to pounce, 

the leopard snarling about to leap 

and the hunters crouch with spears poised;

And my blood ripples, turns torrent, 

topples the years and at once I'm 

in my mother's laps a sucklings 

at once I'mw walking simple 

paths with no innovations, 

rugged, fashioned with the naked 

warmth of hurrying feet and groping hearts 

in green leaves and wild flowers pulsing.

Then I hear a wailing piano 

solo speaking of complex ways 

in tear-furrowed concerto; 

of far away lands 

and new horizons with

coaxing diminuendo, counterpoint, 

crescendo. But lost in the labyrinth 

of its complexities, it ends in the middle 

of a phrase at a daggerpoint.

And I lost in the morning mist

of an age at a riverside keep 

wandering in the mystic rhythm 

of jungle drums and the concerto.