Often referred to as 'the Nigerian Negritudist', Gabriel Okara (b.1921) is also a novelist. A pioneer of modern literature, he has won both local and international literary awards.

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Piano and Drums

Gabriel Okara

When at break of day at a riverside

I hear the jungle drums telegraphing

the mystic rhythm, urgent, raw

like bleeding flesh, speaking of

primal youth and the beginning

I see the panther ready to pounce

the leopard snarling about to leap

and the hunters crouch with spears poised;

And my blood ripples, turns torrent,

topples the years and at once I'm

in my mother's laps a suckling;

at once I'm walking simple

paths with no innovations,

rugged, fashioned with the naked

warmth of hurrying feet and groping hearts

in green leaves and wild flowers pulsing.

Then I hear a wailing piano

solo speaking of complex ways in

tear-furrowed concerto;

of far away lands

and new horizons with

coaxing diminuendo, counterpoint,

crescendo. But lost in the labyrinth

of its complexities, it ends in the middle

of a phrase at a daggerpoint.

And I lost in the morning mist

of an age at a riverside keep

wandering in the mystic rhythm

of jungle drums and the concerto.

*Third World Resurgence No. 292, December 2014, p 44