Remi Raji

1963 / Ibadan

I will find you

Tonight my verse will find you dancing alone
a hurricane of desires will pass me, unknown.

And I the anchor, martyr to your trance,
draped, in the absolution of your absence.

You for whom I have wandered in uncertain pines
You for whom I have sacrificed my limbs in open mines.

You for whom I have many names...

What delights me more this very moment:
your laughter, salty as the rain's chemistry
on a parched tongue, or your seismic filament,
which gives fulness to your minted mystery.

Tonight my verse seeks you but I'm a speck of dream.

In the middle of it all, when you are not there
I always find you in the finesse of sand
in the sounds of stones, rivers, and in the clouds' jeer
in the waves, in the foams and dunes of the land.

We will not know the day but the hour will come

in the hurricane and the dance
in the liberty of the trance
in this serration
and that imagination
all mean less than the remembrance of fire.

It is in that hour that my verse will find you
It is in that second that my song will fill you.
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