HAPPY ARRIVAL HARMATTAN!

            

Just when high winds accompany the blaze of sunny days

And gales and whirlwinds made blitz over the plane,

When the fireball moon journeys late down the horizon and casts a topaz ray,

As overdue crops fall to the scythe and with bundled sheaves, farmers trudge their way;

When the searing sun has evaporated the earth’s moisture,

And the waters had again accumulated in the sky, waiting to pour;

Just as the fields fallow, ready for the plow, and yam seedlings keep piling,

And then, just after the gloaming, streams a chill air that brings

The morning whitewash air and noonday shades of brown, then it’s time to sing:

Happy Arrival Harmattan!

O thou intermediary between the great wet and dry seasons

Who shortly arrives to mediate their long dispute in friendship.

The windowpanes blur with dew but are later burnt by burning rays;

Such humid air but much of the day fraught with haze.

By morning, the plants are firm and drippy but soon to limp and shed.

Fever and pneumonia besiege humans, scabs upon animals invade;

The hamlet a golden gloss at dusk; growths tainted with rust;

Frame trees that shed their leaves to be layered around the hut,

As the atmosphere swings, lo, we await a birth with the carol song:

Happy Arrival Harmattan!

Fly higher, higher you forlorn birds, fly where comfort you may find.

The forest is bare, your nest jeopardized by hard cold and winds.

Where are flowers and sapp for you by morn as men do with coffee?

Your morning hymns are silenced by chillness, same in bed do men keep.

Rather cheerfully chirrup the passing dryness and expect the coming rainfall,

When again would sprout the forest green and sweet freshly bloomed flower balls.

And all you wild forest dwellers, do I hear you wail or hail your estrangement?

Often I hear you overnight and more often seen from the forest fringe;

Nevertheless, your bother is hinged upon no choice but to say:

Happy Arrival Harmattan!

Up in flurry, all in a flurry, plow the earth and make the field a furrow;

Sift dry sheaves from rafters, gather the seeds, stalks, and roots;

Mend roofs and crannies, make drains and barrages, the rain comes anon,

Hunters have swells of games, banes stuffed, grains preserved for months;

And as tiny as ants gather bits into heaps to sustain for the period.

Are the seasons wet and dry? Then there’s no relief.

Are you bored of long wet or dry season weather? Here is solace.

Hence, we create not or make the change at a whim, the space,

All work best for our good, and so in response to the sweet psalm we sing:

Happy Arrival Harmattan!

A DUOLOGUE BETWEEN GOOD AND EVIL

(This duologue is as much as the visioner could recall. He had lost qualms of his actions and while he dallies under a pine scheming, suddenly a whiff of scudding cloud enshrouds and overwhelms him and soon is transported to an unknown yard where he witnesses two men under a baobab who regard themselves as Good and Evil makes an oral interchange).

 

Evil: hail Good, how comes thou like the wake of dawn!

Good: hallo Evil, like the fall of the gloaming thou looms!

Evil: where hath thy journey from and to in earnest?

Good: i wander about long in the neighbourhood, still seeking accommodation.

Evil: why? How often do i welcome thee to my salubrious estate?

Good: stay awhile still, though i may subsist to be tenant and squatter.

Evil: thou hath no plot nor have set thy foundation and on would traverse.

Good: so seems it. But then it robs not my respect among men.  

Evil: hey hombre, but thou go blundering, thy personality wanes.

Good:  thou old fellow, thy popularity wax ever.

Evil: Ye, because thou hath hard by reward for men.

Good: i assert to be good is good, not ‘cause there abide reward.

Evil: thou are silly, tell me, what could men do without profit?

Good: true I am hard by unlike thy frivolous beguiling gift for men.

Evil: mind thee Good that it’s by my influence men even desire thee.

Good: what think thee, that me men abandon for thee?

Evil: look, an enticing scenery they can’t despise, paint I that entrap them.

Good: so creatively deceptive thou, but thou make them sour afterwards.

Evil: Hu, ha, ha… How thou hath relegated like the backdrop on stage.

Good: silly that thou put up a fictitious show of thyself, an impersonator.

Evil: who need thy Genuity? Thou afford a long peril of sacrifice.

Good: and thou afford them a short live pleasure that begets lasting doom.

Evil: why, by consequence, my advocates tend to make good of life.

Good: same that long-suffering, men avoid, bringing about the evil of life.

Evil: if all men were to be thee, hardly shall thou be upheld.

Good: and if all men were thee, even I, shall become frailty.

Evil: discover thee, not my unflinching ingenuity and manoeuvring.

Good: i shall bask only in my innocence and simplicity of mind.

Evil: know, I cause men to bask in the present and to forgo what will be.

Good: why? Is there no reason to reflect on the past and the aftermath?

Evil: thou chary fool, the past’s gone and still no future but now or never!

Good: so it is nowadays, men hardly could label thee from me.

Evil: and in their habit, they hardly could perceive my influence.

Good: and for their gain, they attribute thy works to my goodwill.

Evil: anon, I tell thee, men shall take thee as I and I as thee!

Good: i refute thee not to think of thy neighbour and see life’s meaning.

Evil: life’s no meaning, it’s survival of the fittest, it’s all for desperation.

Good: wonder why not seemed the Omniscient concerned with men’s affairs

Evil: Omniscient? Man is controlled by his own will and determination.

Good: O, how much I contemplate of the implication after death.

Evil: there is thy weakness, fearful slot, think thou beyond thy death?

Good: willed I thou would assuage the heaviness of my heart.

Evil: away thou qualmish otiose Being, soon shall I dominate thee!

Good: Oh, how long should I be a cast-off? Think I to be or not...!