He picked a pebble from Olisa on a night the stars
fidgeted in the sky.
                        If music was a storm, in 1970, no one
would survive the rage in his voice.
            I wonder if he was born to sing of loss,
of a banana burying its child with its own hands.
The millipede’s carcass enshrouded
through the ground’s ear.
            We came here together, but some of you
gathered light in your throats before you learned
of nights & absence.
            My grandfather touched his children with
a staff of wisdom. My father would sing and sing
of the banana tree’s grief.
            As the music waded through the sky putrefied
by a country’s loss, the ṣẹ̀kẹ̀rẹ̀ man remembered his
mother & began to cry. It was the origin of shared grief.
            How centuries later, these songs still open coffins
& bury the dead of their own accord.