Joseph Kolawole

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What Now?

My legs prance
To the trado-modern tunes
Emanating from bàtá, ìyá-ìlù;
Omele gángan sounds like toms,
Sèkèrè, like the cymbalic snare.

My kíjìpá trousers and suit- tight,
Carefully woven
under that mango tree
Of Ìgbómìnà land;
My shirt, the million-coloured
Kampala, carefully dyed in the
earthen pots of Òkè-ògún--

I simmer, then boil under
The oven- ous African heat- cruel--

Scary noose around my neck,
as if doomed for hanging-
For I carry upon me
the sigil of an alien origin.

What shoe will I wear?
Is it my adẹjá sandal?
A product of used lorry tyres
Shaped into shape with that
Sharp knife from Sokotí's smithy;
Or, jáláwọótà, my pseudo-leatheric
Imported of somewhere across the sea.

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