Eyo Festival, Lagos, November 2011 photo by author
The Pulitzer-winning
Stenographer
Asks the Poet Laureate
For a dance.
The Composer of the Year’s
Ears are talked off
By the Most Valuable
Player while,
In a darker corner,
The First Violinist's breasts
Are pressed
By the Professor Emeritus.
The words “Stockholm”
And “Wimbledon”
Ribbon through
The midsummer night's air.
Lannanites, MacArthurians,
Struggle in vain
To explain
How they did it.
An ancient pair
Of Nobel Prize winners
Suffocate
In each other’s perfume
And in a tiny chair
behind the bandstand,
Last year’s Booker finalist,
Looks ever so lost,
A silk tie in his hand.
(May 2005)