This poem describes hearing jungle drums by a river in the morning that evoke primal instincts and a return to youth. The drums represent simplicity and a closeness to nature. In contrast, a wailing piano solo is then heard, speaking of complexity, distant lands, and new horizons through its musical techniques. However, the piano ends abruptly, leaving the listener lost in its complexities. The speaker is now lost between the simple rhythm of the drums and the complexity of the piano, wandering in the mist at the riverside.
This poem describes hearing jungle drums by a river in the morning that evoke primal instincts and a return to youth. The drums represent simplicity and a closeness to nature. In contrast, a wailing piano solo is then heard, speaking of complexity, distant lands, and new horizons through its musical techniques. However, the piano ends abruptly, leaving the listener lost in its complexities. The speaker is now lost between the simple rhythm of the drums and the complexity of the piano, wandering in the mist at the riverside.
This poem describes hearing jungle drums by a river in the morning that evoke primal instincts and a return to youth. The drums represent simplicity and a closeness to nature. In contrast, a wailing piano solo is then heard, speaking of complexity, distant lands, and new horizons through its musical techniques. However, the piano ends abruptly, leaving the listener lost in its complexities. The speaker is now lost between the simple rhythm of the drums and the complexity of the piano, wandering in the mist at the riverside.
This poem describes hearing jungle drums by a river in the morning that evoke primal instincts and a return to youth. The drums represent simplicity and a closeness to nature. In contrast, a wailing piano solo is then heard, speaking of complexity, distant lands, and new horizons through its musical techniques. However, the piano ends abruptly, leaving the listener lost in its complexities. The speaker is now lost between the simple rhythm of the drums and the complexity of the piano, wandering in the mist at the riverside.
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PIANO AND DRUMS
BY Gabriel Okara (Nigeria)
When at break of day at a riverside
I hear jungle drums telegraphing the mystic rhythm, urgent raw like bleeding flesh, speaking of primal youth and the beginning, I see the panther ready to pounce, the leopard snarling about to leap and the hunters crouch with spears poised;
And my blood ripples, turns torrent,
topples the years and at once I’m in my mother’s lap a suckling; at once I’m walking simple paths with no innovations, rugged, fashioned with the naked warmth of hurrying feet and groping hearts in green leaves and wild flowers pulsing.
Then I hear a wailing piano
solo speaking of complex ways in tear-furrowed concerto; of far-away lands and new horizons with coaxing diminuendo, counterpoint, crescendo. But lost in the labyrinth of its complexities, it ends in the middle of a phrase at a dagger point.
And I lost in the morning mist
of an age at a riverside keep wandering in the mystic rhythm of jungle drums and the concerto.
