The Imprisonment of Obatala by John Pepper Clark

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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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