Akinlabi Peter A Walk on the Plateau barkin ladi, near Jos, Nigeria 1 walls of cactuses, a dark path: an invasion of shadows announces identities of arms and whispers shedding names, the women melt into shadows into lights, blooming, like melons – voices and shadows a happy hysteria – benita’s bar ladi’s night is wrinkled with cold, importunate, prolonged, hiding behind the reigning rocks – a divided view, it turns out 2 nameless trees stand, somber chivalry, along the market road, and two lovers part into two unrevealing shadows… mountains rise like goddesses fogged in night’s strange grace over this land where water sprouts in a taxidermic surprise an immeasurable space- these lakes, these ponds, these scarred biographies miners have dug up for desire -abandoned now 3 on a dark path towards the seminary: the trees join heads in incestuous dialogue, widening their roots into your mind … you know only a knitting mind like pam might know the secret of their insular copulation and the hidden memory of their names but names here are memory of a courtesan: you will imagine men laying their songs in a brimming calabash or mine diggers surrendering fatigue at the ledge of the thatched dream
4 riding the wall of cactuses, nights row by, a body of dreams, a body of winds – you see women of sunset, near chi, returning home, eyes full of breeze… and you walk this earth breaking certain devotion on these hillocks, and watching the ground of faith shift, like us you walk this earth with that ritual faith for this meaning, this secret, this stirring desire that men caress like sadness. | 
