[the Aburi Accord was a meeting to prevent the outbreak of the Nigerian Civil War of 1967-70]

on the table: a pyramid, a spongy rock soaked

in oil and a vase of forest. the climbers, the rock

breakers and the peanut growers have colluded

mixing their lands together again. the mixer has

the shape of an English throat; to roll the desert

and the sea in the huge belly of a cement mixer

the mortar is baked into bricks piling up our

country again, each floor lifted above Kano riots

and reprisal killings. with clay they patch an old

wall where a gunshot was hiding its echo;

where a man had circled for miles after his brother,

a dagger for a hand, stabbing his scream to silence.

as they built, the howling in Abel's bloodshed

grew smaller and fainter as the khaki-dressed

masons lift the state up. they have gathered their

old tongues like bruised snakes in the middle of

the palace court of the old empire. the white

snake has been licensed to swallow them all up,

with their fangs of vernaculars and local dialects.

when they retired back to their tents, they returned

to their mouths blaming the white snake for twisting

their terms to indulge the Son of peace; pressing

its swollen belly to give back their snakes, which

turn back into staffs and into their tongues of wood.

the tower crumbles as the bloodshed becomes visible

in the rubble again. the patched wall sheds again,

releasing the bullets back in all directions calling

for new bullets to fill the new wound in my country.

Contributor Notes

O-Jeremiah Agbaakin received an LL. B degree from the University of Ibadan. His poems are forthcoming or published in 20.35 Africa: Anthology of Contemporary Poetry, Cordite, The Malahat Review, RATTLE, South Dakota Review, The South Carolina Review, West Branch, Pittsburgh Poetry Journal, Poetry Northwest, Notre Dame Review, and elsewhere. He has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize Anthology and the Best of the Net Award. He is the Contributing Editor for Africa In Dialogue.