Obododinma Oha

Mmanwu in Ascent

The call of the ram horn

Searching the ant holes, mesmerizing

Every knower caught in the Web of words

Mmanwu, of distant truth

Wrapped in the smells of many spells

Bursting with song

Is it a voice that I hear

Or a legend that rains

All over the land?

Mmanwu, of distant vision

Trapped in a house of mirrors

Image-on-Image

Is it a sight that I behold

Or a text

Afloat on the magic of the mirrors?

Out of the depths he comes,

Ancestor and god the word

Rising onto the future of the past

A word for the last word

The word, the last word

The last hope that Chukwu will begin

Again from speech

The word only the word

Rises from the grave new world

The word only

The word only the word

Forever, after all noises

The word forever

The word forever the hope

That Chukwu will not perish

With the future

Wars and Rumours of Wars

Wars and rumours of wars

If Warsaw ever saw war

Not like the fury of the sound of this fury

Cracking, crashing, crushing old unities

Now, and death marches on

And death marches on between brothers

Hooting with the Hutus

Toothing with the Tutsis

Here and there, a call to grief

Aguleri once ate with Umuleri

Iran once ran with Iraq

But now death marches on

Reducing friends to fiends

And death marches on against the rhyme

Of reason, against a coherent poem

Cancelling here, rewriting there

And death marches against history

Spreading wars, and rumours of wars. 

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Obododimma Oha