The Coolness Within Poem by Timothy Ogunsakin

They said your journey commenced
From Osun
I’m here but you
Run in my thought.
You caress on me like a
Mother lullng her child

Flowing under a roof of fronds,
Your silent song like an
Only voice in this desert.
Do I still see those cobras
Who come to kill their thirst?
(I wept when my kin killed one)

Regaling ornithology dressed
Grandier than Solomon
Singing as no choir of his
Father may have sang.
Gliding fingerlings unpertunrbed;
Franternise freely under
The canopy of your green

Here’s a host on paradise!
Here’s a home to numbers unknown
Who make your cool a resting?
Here’s rest, here’s fills
The Macdonald of my father’s flock
No greener grass has land given
Than the lush on the threshold of Alẹ tu.

This brook has supplied
Generation of merriment
To generation untold.
Your world is wine.
Alẹ tu! When I think home
I think you.


year 2006