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Chief Francis Ohanyido

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Be alert!
CLAN KIND: An Ode to Ufuma of old
Threshold of nothingness
The warrior's drum
Untouched
June ´76
Kaleidoscope

Be alert!

O House of the Niger
Come let us talk
For word was secretly brought to me
Amid disquieting dreams in the night
My ears caught a whisper of it: BE ALERT!

What did it mean?
I prayed, meditated and then understood.

We must learn to be alert
To the times in which we live
Beware the company of thieves
Who suffer the’ Nigerian Syndrome’?
Where everyone loves a bribe
Where promotion is in tribe
Where money is truth and conscience his booth
Where gangsterism and cultism reign supreme
Where success is eating while others starve.

Yes we must be alert always
And give deep thoughts
For those who draw iniquity
With cords of falsehood
Who roam our neighborhood
Doing evangelical ‘419’
Who have replaced light with darkness
For the day of the Lord will come like a thief
In the night, LETS BE ALERT!

CLAN KIND: An Ode to Ufuma of old

I

I beheld the grinning mask of pleasure;
Of the masquerade of the ancestral treasure.
It was a vision without measure.
In the great silence of the night
The spirit of the trove stood bright
And beamed upon my wondering sight
I heard his roar, and the voice was thunder
Briefly fear quaked me asunder
And as suddenly submerged under.

II

Through the mist of fire, I basked
In the glow of understanding with the masked
Messenger of my forebear, and my mind was tasked.
I saw the secret of the ancient trinity-
My forebears, the masquerade and I in unity.
T’was then that I saw that my new age pride was vanity
I realized that I knew so little, I also knew no fears
Nor will I in ignorance again forget the tears
For a generation that denies its forebears.

III

Timeless beauty sparkled in his being
The fragrance of sweet traditions
Was exuded in soft and pleasing
Tides of warm radiations.
And as if with springs under my feet
My hand extended forth to meet
The great “Mgbedike”.
He came to my cordial hand
To greet in ancient salute
And from a silver band
On his mirror studded head
He drew forth the mystical ‘oja’ flute
It was golden with a single red
Bead of a glittering jewel
And my Silver cross I showed him
He understood and smiled, well pleased.
I had chosen my path and the vision was now dim
I picked the ‘oja’ and blew it, it was cute!
And...Ah! I glimpsed into the citadel
Of ancient lore and wisdom!
Even now; I still feel it’s magic
As I touch it to my brow
And stopped to ponder the tragic
Fate of our traditions.

Threshold of nothingness

He stood still
Trembling in the night
A threshold
Of nothingness
A black face
Washed with sweat
Tanned by the sun
Agleam in moonlight.
Palm frond
Twisted between
Quavering lips
A mockery
Of warriorhood
A tale of strangers
With skin of nzu
And abominable betrayals
Of the calabash
Of the kindred spirits.
His body shook
For fear stood
With him.
Why?
Cried his mind.
His uncle?
Abomination!

Strength fled
His being
And his body
Paid fear
With chills
As his knees
Like drained saplings
Bent to kiss
The earth.
He tried to stand
But the hut
Began to spin
Again the knees
Greeted the earth
And his shackles
Bit deeply
Into his ankles.

How long now
2 , 4 …6 moons?

The stench of his fear
Made brother
To his excrement
Keyed his senses
As nausea
Like a tempest
Welled up in him.

His arms
Across his chest
Met in a hug.
With head bowed
In conquered submission
The amulet bands
Hugging his arms
Watched
In serpentine impotence
A warrior subdued
He awaited the cockcrow
Into
An unknown world
A fate
Worse than Osu!

The warrior's drum

I have heard it told
I have heard it said
Many times, in many folktales of old
That there was in ancient days
The drum of drums.

From where did the drum come?
Not even the most ancient and wizened
Of men could say for sure.
But it is believed that even before seasoned
Warriors wore loin-cloths and scabbard machetes
The drum existed.

The drum was only beaten
With war chants renting the air
It was an instrument of spells
And was beaten by the gentlest of men
With stringed tinkling bells
Wound round his legs

It was never beaten in anger
But throbbed in the sight of danger.

It readied the brave and strengthened
The weakest of men to do battle
By setting their blood to boil
In mystic rhythms, in their veins.

Many an enemy warrior was entranced
By the spell-binding beats
-And with weakened hearts
-And with marred courage
They were felled to the earth
Never again to dance to the music of warriors, It was the mystery of bravery betrayed.
And so many villages fell……….

There is this beautiful old drum
That I have seen several times
In my grandpa’s inner room
He talks to it like a friend
And I’ve never seen him beat it. It looks exactly like the drum of the tales Maybe someday I would beat it -without anger, and gently And see what it will feel like Do you suppose it’s the same drum?

Untouched

In the flurry
of fisticuffs
he bowls over
rolling, howling
into the rain
body racked
by a gale of pain.
he tries to gain height
but his legs fail him
he stumbles and falls…

he stands tall
in no hurry
head raised
in disdain
nostrils flaring
with anger
unfurled of its tempest
by the sight in the rain.

untouched
unscathed

he turns
from the gaining rain
into the recesses
of the palm wine bar
unhappy conquest

-a simple matter
of wine over mind.

June ´76

a-f-r-i-k-a-a-n-s
strange word
un-bantu
forced on us
lost to us
a hybrid

Yours truly, not ours

a
make believe
discordant call
to cultural alienation
to lingual strangulation
and mis-education
of farafina’s
tongue
but
we
heard
her
song
born of the heart
sweeping across the veld
and we the school children
of azania
understood
ja ja jo
ja ja jo
and
she cried
in her tears
we saw the vision
of tomorrow’s adults
battalions of afrikaaned africans
culturally emasculated
eunuchs
and our
dissonant voices
rose in unison
to the peak of uKhahlamba
flamed across knysna, quaked hluhluwe

broke white chalk
spoke in tongues
one welded mind
mind against might

then
they came
and shot us, at us
and
young hector pieterson died
our hearts were fired
by the spirit of shaka
crying uhuru
wielding our will
to speak
when tongues clashed
crying uhuru
ja ja jo
ja ja jo

and
Soweto burned

Kaleidoscope

I stood
concealed within the shady wood
observer unobserved
watching the pristine beach
as sunbeams across the face of the water glowed
while its tide ran in coldness
to a darkness below
and in this serene
breathtaking moment
I felt warm sunny smile
grace my cheeks for a while
as butterflies and birds captured
the air and painted it in patches
of graffiti of the rainbow
it was a surreal kaleidoscope
for me as an awakening
in the garden of eden