Portion - universityofafricanart.org

Embellished with sparkling feats sewn with stones of canary on royal coronets
Farmlands yielded giant fruits infants sprouted with godlike youths
To where did we proceed from this age of prosperity?
Mouthpieces of silent gods we were taken, anxious rots
Apart from sundry without a spouse brought under lock within a house,
Seven of us sequestered in one campus
Three men, three women, one hermaphrodite
One in shared spirit, united as a single organ
Locked up in a hut, doors and windows shut
No food or water, no care to ponder
For seven days we saw no face, without respite, without sunlight.
For seven nights for divine sights, we waited were awaited.
Following four days with hope raised, on no water or food
Dark room, night mood, and no luxury of sleep
We saw mirages steep of life and death ascending pedestal wealth
We watched, silent, separating mask from musk.
More dances, more trances, more call making
More hall pacing: Nothing, we waited, daunted, and wasted
As our entreaties ascend will words indeed descend
As latest moon-patterns dictated, and as our flesh wasted?
The calabash did not move, its water still as stone stove
As our waiting, as our waking.
Like descending swords those awaited words
When they came from the gods were not from water gourds:
Virginal infant, back packed, no giant, by a common slave
Began to speak, breaking the silence, destroying the peace