“Piano and Drums” by **Gabriel Okara**
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“Piano and Drums” by **Gabriel Okara**
from admin on 07/02/2017 05:53 AMWhen 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
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