I sleep in laps. Wake up, rest from sleep like resting from work, then return to sleep-work.
What is this shadow that follows me in the dark, despairing when the switch goes down?
There is mud about my feet, reaching up to my trousers’ knees, and there is water.
There is water all about my feet, reaching up to my waist, and there is mud in my mouth.
Three snake-spits of perfume are not enough to dispel the smell of your body from this book.
I read it with caution, each page a step towards the place where I first found you writing it.
The prophecies are not fulfilled, they reappear like the dreams that, apart, we dream together.
What is this shadow that wakes up when I switch off the lights and leave the radio playing?
The things we create with mud and water seem speechless, but we hear them clearly enough.
We read the story, realizing it won’t end with this life, our lives, realizing it can’t end.
Your body-smell clinging to every page of this book that watches over me when I fall asleep….
When the thoughts swim across
I hear the voices of libation
Mami Wota rejoicing
Atop the waves, the wine-drunken sea
A fishtail flicking the water
But she said not to tell
Our little hush-hush it is
Aquamarine enfolds corals
A shoal of hues slithers into my head
I become that shrub
Vibrating with the harassment
Of scurrying squirrels
But she said not to tell, our hush-hush
The moon pours her liquid inside me…
Mockery of dreams, lost vision, magic world recedes in light
What was amber-vivid becoming a blank of white—
I try to remain on the lake in the cave, grope my way back
Linger on bodies tattooed like ancient rock
Play the apparatus of extension, shofar and gong
Draw out music and paint thoughts in song
Dreamscape figures waltzing in and out in cameo
Reading from codices stories we will never know—
And we were born as wonders in this water museum
Where papyri fill the spaces in the displayed cranium—
Mariners swimming through serrated crevices
In the future perfect tense, donning head-mounted devices
We inscribe on the pool’s touchscreen panel
Those hieroglyphs inlaid with already cracking enamel…
_____________
Benson Eluma teaches at the University of Ibadan.
