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The Imprisonment of Obatala
Those stick-insect figures! they rock the dance
Of snakes, dart after Him daddy-long arms,
Tangle their loping strides to mangrove stance
And He, roped in the tightning pit of alarms
Dangles in His front, full length,
Invincible limbs cramp’d by love of their strength.
And that mischievous stir, late sown or spilt
On the way between homestead and stream,
Wells up in pots long stagnant on stilt,
Brims out to where ancestral eyes gleam
Till angry waves dam His track
And caterpillars riding break their back.
One leap upon the charcoal-coloured ass
Swishing ochre urine towards palace and sun,
Kicking impatient tattoo on the grass,
And generations unborn spared the wrong.
But the cry of a child at what it knows not
Evokes trebly there the droop, mud-crack and clot.
— John Pepper Clark
Obatala is Yoruba creator God. His annual festival contains a ritual imprisonment of the God and his subsequent liberation. The poem is inspired by a batik by Susanne Wenger.
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