I Am A Griot Poem by Tony Adah

I am a griot
When real men have gone to their trades
I am home telling tales
To both the aged and the infants
Every one loves my songs,
For those who snob them
I love them myself.
I sing of joy and of melancholy
Of birth and of death
I prowl the yard
Like a hog
Scavenging the worthiness of dumps
I am not in the farm of anybody
But laze -gazing at home
That's why I can tell
How the kite seized a chick
And the hen fought in vain
To rescue its kind;
And how the duck's quietude
Saved the duckling from
The claws of the hungry kite.

I am the griot
Who brings ease
To the tired farmers back
From their farms.
I tell them
How the hen feared trouble
And had her knees behind her trotters;
How a toad's lateness to a meeting
Of awarding body appendages
Made him miss a tail.
I am a griot
They love my stories
But hate my person
And they are greedy for my songs
Like the greedy lizard who swallowed hot food
And lost his voice
I am the Griot
Who saw the snake delayed by the toad
On his way to a meeting of gathering
Gifts of body parts and missed his legs
But decided to swallow the toad
Whose wisdom told him
That the duel should be done by the road
Where mans intervention rescued the toad.

I am the Griot
Who sat by the river bank
And listened to the song of the crocodiles
And saw the anger of the predators
At the legion hues of the chameleons.
I am the griot
Who saw the sanity of the roach's stupor
In the coffin
Of the hen's gizzard.
I am the griot
Who knows that the kite's beautiful look
Is different from his inner thinking.
I am the griot
Lazy in their farms but active in my own
And pruned to burying the corpses of infants
I am here silently
Watching the community
Allow a greedy few
Emasculate the huddled masses
And I am a griot.