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THE CASUALTIESJohn Pepper ClarkThe casualties are not only those who are dead; They are well out of it. The casualties are not only those who are wounded, Thought they await burial by installment The casualties are not only those who have lost Person or property, hard as it is To grape for a touch that some May not know is not there The casualties are not those led away by night; The cell is a cruel place, sometimes a heaven, No where as absolute as the grave The casualties are not those who started A fire and now cannot put to out. Thousands Are burning that had no say in the matter. The casualties are not only those who escaping The shattered shell become prisoners in A fortress of falling walls.
The casualties are many, and a good number well Outside the scene of ravage and wreck; They are the emissaries of rift, So smug in smoke-room they haunt abroad, They are wandering minstrels who, beating on The drum of human heart, draw the world Into a dance with rites it does not know
The drum overwhelm the guns… Caught in the clash of counter claims and charges When not in the niche others have left, We fall. All casualties of war, Because we cannot hear other speak, Because eyes have ceased to see the face from the crowd, Because whether we know or Do not know the extent of wrong on all sides, We are characters now other than before The war began, the stay- at- home unsettled By taxes and rumor, the looter for office And wares, fearful everyday the owners may return, We are all casualties, All sagging as are The case celebrated for kwashiorkor, The unforeseen camp-follower of not just our war. AGBOR DANCERJohn Pepper ClarkSee her caught in the throb of a drum Tippling from hide-brimmed stem Down lineal veins to ancestral core Opening out in her supple tan Limbs like fresh foliage in the sun.
See how entangled in the magic Maze of music In trance she treads the intricate Pattern rippling crest after crest To meet the green clouds of the forest.
Tremulous beats wake trenchant In her heart a descent Tingling quick to her finger tips And toes virginal habits long Too atrophied for pen or tongue.
Could I, early sequester’d from my tribe, Free a lead – tether’d scribe I should answer her communal call Lose myself in her arm cares Intervolving earth, sky and flesh. THE YEAR’S FIRST RAINJohn Pepper ClarkRain comes After long surcease in desert Rain comes, Hot- breathing, alert And swift to thunder rolls and claps With kestrel-together – leaf flaps. And earth all the while waiting waitng insert, Fallow and burdened with stone, Shudders to her rump,
Tingles to the trump Of the long missed one. Now with more than tongue can tell Thrusts, he stokes her, swamps her, Enters all of him beyond her fell, Till in the calm and cool after All alone, earth yawns, limbers her stay, Swollen already with the life to break at day. THE LAGOS – IBADAN ROAD BEFORE SHAGAMUJohn Pepper ClarkA bus groaned uphill. Trapped In their seat, fifty odd passengers rocked To its pulse, each dreaming Of a different destination. God’s time is the best, read One legend. No condition is Permanent, said another. And on, On over the hill Shittu Drove the lot, a cloud of India hemp Unfolding among his robes. With The swish over his shoulders, it Trailed out, touched tails with the smoke That squatted all indigo On the hillside: like a stream Was the going downhill, swift Past recollection, straight into a bend Upturned as a saucer, and The journey spilt over in a ditch. In the early morning sun, To the clamour of files that first Answered the alarm water Of sewage kind washed their common Wound, silence their common groan. No need of first aid, All died on the spot Said the dailies. The police, Well supplied with noted, Are looking for the driver Who escaped unhurt.
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