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| In the morning when men still longs for their women, I start out at twilight, before all nature awoke, and as the clouds in its blanket of blues hangs over my head I heard a pheasant jazz across the field.
The trees stands out like accusers, the weeds seems to bow as I walk by, the wind have its own voice, applauded by the clapping leaves, I felt the chill from the contact as low branches along the narrow parts merge flesh against nature green It is what I like about my works, the poetry I write, and of fiction I composed, of our ancestors and of nature, to be first along this ancient path, with my pad and pen, the spirit will lives in my works And while the shadows stand watching I seek the sculptured speeches The dialect of old in terrace work In time to put it to the proof �Each section seems to welcome me, drawing on me dictating my thoughts, and I remembered the feeling, like a pioneer, the feeling of possession, my mind telling me, this is mine, all of nature is in me Moving through the familiar parts, this scenery was my story book, something in its peacefulness calls me inward, the beauty of nature in the scent of our lineage, these things are special to me, like nothing else in my life ever will This happiness is rampaging through me when ever I set sight on a topic of interest; an ancient tree, a lost artifact, of mud swing and the trill of discovering new things, In my line of sight nature works with my state of mind, imagine the valley adjacent to my tribe as a slave pit, or the yam tendril entwining a woman to me in my dreams, as of now I thought of Ken and the Ogoni Eight And suddenly crawling groping grapping, Arms of branches reaching to strangle the words out of me, Nature Unguarded utterance that may lead them to prints keeping watch over my steps, The roaring pathos shrill loud and trembling, Pictured the bleak interior of a slave passage, Stealing into my heart taking notes of all that I do In poetry form, Seeking reason to deny my fear The pain communicated through flesh The clacking of separation The slithering of movement The pumping in my ear and vein And I was fighting as the rope burned into my neck Searing like fire And something gave as the areole of the lung inflated The unheard music in a captive cage The rope were tight playing the song and were the Ogoni song, the air spoke the words, and was the Ogoni words, thought out words in rain of memory falling down healing hurts over the River States The pen groped the pregnant air with blindfold I try to see the flesh left behind on the path as whole selves were briefly recalled with the shock wave of sudden death Yet the yearning of my hearts beat on the path and old tree stir trying to speak of an Ogoni hanging on its branch, and the selves roared in me, blasting me with these grammars, the cords were still on my throat hanging me with the Sosa boys In my pad the eight lifted each other up in prints that wordlessly wail as soul that rose out of flesh went over the shell-shocked oil well Tangled in prison clothing in my poems you will hear an Ogoni cry as the ripped flesh exposes the desperation with the same Rotten English From nature I listened to the music and I write about it, scene my mind knew note by note the words more our came back to me black hands feet and faces Igbo, Hausa, Edo and all ethnic grammar with the pulse and softness of it When the sun was directly over head The sneeze of breeze caught me unemployed A snarls like an angry beast An eerie haul made the oak to waltz When the cloud shadowed out the sun The dust rose from the ground in flight Gatherings power at every jump As my poetry creeps over the coast |
| POETIC PASSAGE |
| Omosun Sylvester Urdeen |
| BIOGRAPHY |