Professor Niyi Osundare courtesy VOA
Oluwaniyi Osundare is the number one poet in Africa. He was selected as the 2008 Laureate of the Tchicaya U'Tamsi Award for African Poetry; which is Africa’s highest poetry prize worth $10,000. He is a Professor of English at the University of New Orleans, USA and was awarded the Fonlon Nichols Award in 1998. Osundare became the first Anglophone poet to win the Noma Prize in 1990. He was influenced by Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka and Chinua Achebe. In 1986, he won the Commonwealth Poetry Prize and Association of Nigerian Authors Poetry Prize. The poet who survived Hurricane Katrina in 2005 has written volumes of poetry e.g. Songs of the Marketplace (1983), The Eye of the Earth (1986), Moonsongs (1988), Songs of the Season (1990), Waiting Laughters (1990) The State Visit (2002) and The Word is an Egg (2002). Osundare is a radical poet who expressed his views on a military regime in Nigeria. He is also a romantic poet and his collection of love poetry is Tender Moments (2006). Polygamous Moon and Adumaradan are poems by Osundare.
A polygamous moon cannot manage
Her plague of husbands
Nodding claims stand stiff
In lunar closets, or hang limp
On the tree of a penitent wardrobe
Jealous rays unravel
The chastity of the night
Desire bathes her wrinkles
In the pitcher of a pagan milk
Night so dark, so hot
Even nouns forget their names
A retinue of adjectives plays
Clown in the courtyard of liquid shadows
Flowing back, fl owing forth
Like the robes of eating chiefs
The moon, polygamous still,
Her roster crowded with passionate longings
Her sweat scented with nameless things
Knowing not what to do with the night’s
Inky consort, and a bevy of stars
Winking coquettishly at her waiting stallions
Adumaradan
Your love engulfs me
As the harmattan overwhelms the heat
I will pledge a thousand favours to the wind
To courier my voice to your ears
Adumaradan, come close to me
So you can behold the honour of my presence
Since the day I set eyes on you
Since the day I had a glimpse of your beauty
Your love has ridden me like a horse of wild winds
I cannot sleep; repose is far from my eyes
Adumaradan, come close to me
So you can behold the honour of my presence
Adumaradan of inestimable beauty
You are the palm oil, honour of the soup
You are the whiteness which proclaims the splendour of the teeth
You are camwood, deep red in the house of beauty
Adumaradan, come close to me
So you can behold the honour of my presence
What is the weaverbird’s work if not the building of wondrous nests
What is the crab’s task if not the digging of holes in the swamp
What job has the scarab beetle besides the music of the heights
What is the lover’s duty if not the pouring of honey into the ears of the beloved
Adumaradan, come close to me
So you can behold the honour of my presence
Teeth-whiter-than-new-coins, owner of the alluring toothgap
She of the bouncing buttocks, who-adorns-the-chest-with-breasts
Adufe, paragon of beauty so full of wisdom
Come let’s play the game of the young and free
Adumaradan, come close to me
So you can behold the honour of my presence
