I

 

There was a man

                  a man

                  a man.

 

       II

 

After his time

There will always be the memory

a version of that terrible legend.

 

       III

 

There was a shepherd who shepherded

the great promise.

 

A shepherd who summoned

the horizon and the point of the astrolabe.

 

There was a shepherd and his bundle of desert.

 

A shepherd and his litany of falling and nothing.

 

       III

 

The inextinguishable memory of that festival.

The cravat of dementia around the Equator.

The air blocking the pores of the houses.

 

       IV

 

Ogun did not know.

Elsewhere someone was sleeping.

Palaces were waltzing in Kampala and Alexandria.

 

       V

 

Mouths fall from branches

- poor fruit -

and here vultures pant.

 

Here they fervently curve

over a carpet of dreams.

 

Here a diadem of gales and darkness

drips into their skulls.

 

Here are the ashes of the clock, the scraps of the flag.

 

The shepherd sows death

in the pores of his kingdom

no rage

drums smoke news

purges the harvest of its bustle.