By CHRIS ANYOKWU

How we love to return you to the tom-tom in primeval night:

When our primal parents, clad in innocence stomped round familial hearth with skewered game:

And rhythm of nature?s children found voice in drum tongue:

And, viola! There you stood resplendent! The ear had got a life-long lover.

Sound multiple worlds into being: ocean riffs,

Masquerade footwork of forest giants, mating cry in undergrowth, moans and groans of earth?s denizens.

Music, your preening cousin never ceases to drag you to the sparring dance, reminding you of her power to raise the dead.

See tiger turn lamb,

Raging storm mellow into halcyon calm, and heaven descend into dark and dreary hell.

Oh, behold the eunuch dream a bevy of belles with tiny-tots milling about his busy hut.

The sovereign loses his crown at the beggar?s feet and the orphan sings his place among royals

You slumber on infant gum, spring to life on wrinkled lips. You ripple, ripple in the maiden?s curvy hips and chant your paean in the strapping youth?s fetching frame.

You spread your soul across earth?s dappled dimpled cornucopia: rainbow in life?s overcast skies; rain in nature?s parched skin.

Neither prophet nor messiah, but origin, birthplace of all.

In the night of our blind pride, when we tug at the end?s tail to court catastrophe, you shall spring forth from the ashes of vanity.

?Chris Anyokwu is Professor of English at UNILAG.

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