November

Penultimate stanza

of the year’s long song

*

With a rhythm all your own

a melody so methodical

*

The season’s showers

have thinned into slivers

*

A liquid glimmer rakes the roofs

of suffocating cities

*

Their corrugated iron sheets glitter

ing like fool’s gold in the sun . . .

*

The jolly jazz of it all:

its jam-packed hours

*

Its riot of riffs

its syncopated s-i-l-e-n-c-e. . .

*

A cacophony rules the streets

of our noise-begotten country:

*

From the dizzying Anambracadabra

on the other side of the Great River

*

Where an excess of contestants

has killed the contest

*

And a Polymer* crown shimmers now

on the head of the grabber-in-chief

Toneless imprecations usurp the air. . . .

*

November has a sweeter song

still lurking in the larynx of the wind

*The multi-million naira Polymer contract sleaze now swirling around one of the principal gubernatorial contestants. In Nigeria, such scandals are solid qualifications for high office.