From Urhonigbe To Okpella Poem by Martins Akhoeneto

From Urhonigbe's green artery
to Okpella's limestone spine,
Edo lengthens beneath the sun

yam sealing the furrow,
rubber ambering the rain,
granite hoarding the memory of fire.

Benin keeps bronze
where centuries lose their names;
at Igun, molten earth
learns the grammar of the hand.

Uromi drums beneath its roofs.
Ekpoma turns pages toward morning.
Auchi gathers distant roads
and teaches the market their convergence.

Here, the old world
does not retreat.

It puts on coral,
steps into the masquerade,
crosses the festival with a drumbeat,
then slips beneath the microphone
and sings itself forward.

Quarry and marketplace.
Crown and classroom.
Forest and foundry.
Mask and microphone.

Everything here
seems to remember
what the other became.

And so Edo is more
than the green between two horizons

it is a people
writing themselves into the earth,
while the earth,
still warm beneath their feet,
writes them back.