So that was the song the wind limned

So that was the song the wind limned, and

Then swallowed back that afternoon.

You caught it in the flute of your throat. You coughed up the cry

That’d have got stuck in the passage. You tasted it

And saw it wasn’t phlegm. You decided

It was not for throwing away

Even though it burned your tongue the longer you held it.

Kolawole said to himself:

This has come into our house

And it has to be kept and shared.

It wasn’t news of the passing of the hamadryad.

It wasn’t news of an assault on the privates of the grove.

It was news that Adunni has hung out her batik

On the horizon, after installing a new constellation

In the woods of heaven.

You said you saw her dip her chalk in the waters

And inscribe life on the ancient palimpsest.

The miracle of scripts

That withstood the baptism of rain,

Withstood the explosion of thunder—

You saw sigidi turn flesh and blood under fire, their

Lips full, shivering with verses from the forgotten corpus.

In the ricochet of orisons and elegiacs off the forest vaulting,

In the sudden quiescence of the rites of commitment,

Kola, you saw the goddess in her throes of transfiguration.