Ode to Blessed Tits by Oyin Oludipe

Yours is the cleansing storm, the glass of wine

Raised to the first-born years of empires,

When an eager morning dew rubs the vine

Coiled and frail, yet clad in temperate fires

Of beginning, as spring’s tender bath full.

But you, no less, are more than a full spring—

Nor a stream coursing thro’ the Sahara

Can dare that youthful profusion of all

Where flesh brews spirit and, thence, heaven’s song

In domes bright and pulses of Golgotha



But dance—o spin—like pores that thresh the sweat,

The dance that eludes all in harvest-tide:

Braids of straw, winged seed and rivulet

Seeking purities that within you bide

With kernelled rain-clouds ranging at each helm

Full of the real, the timid galaxy

Whose high lustrous paths doth deign to savour

The ponderous route of your cleavage stem;

And the Caribbean, full of envy

To your secret arc turns a troubadour



Churn deep inside, convert, and do convey

What earth hath lost to age in anxious rush,

The dark; the doubt; the drought that grips her sway

Now, when Time’s grace as yours is not as lush

When fissures rend the polished bark of youth;

When to speak the truth is to sprain the truce

‘Tween the Vale of Death and Liberty’s Sky,

When the rafter’s gourds detonate with froth

And Revelation, smirched by squeals of mice,

Bears barbarous tune of centuries’ lie



Your charisma as in growth’s abrasion

Should rage, till hell-fingers caress the cape

Of paradise, till death stacks the vision

Of living, of sensing, and lips agape

For your nimble tremor is muse to fire

Your grassless knolls the anthills of magic

Tasting of earthmist and the vastness blue

O what season may trounce your gracious spire?

Save a succ’lence to bend Harmattan’s beak

And bid her fly away for decades two

Painting: Sofia Bury

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