Pansiwaa...

A goddess who struts in rocking beads

Ah! So do you think the lizard prostrates for nothing?

My Nubian queen of cinnamon delight, fleshy as a baobab

Face of a harvest moon, dispersing stars to an early sleep

Grace of the gazelle, floating kapok in the Harmattan Winds!

Pansiwaa, with her lips of zebra stripes, inviting like the froth

of African palm wine

Pansiwaa, her eyes are of the panther’s, pushing darkness

into a broad daylight

But for your warmth

I have missed in this wilderness of lashing coldness

Run my fingers through your fronds of jet black dreads

And have my sorrows melted in the grove of your shrine

I’ve sailed the seven seas, and felt its turbulent waves against my skin

This blackness which you nourished with your tender hands of shea-butter

Are now tough like the rhino’s

That only your Congo could dissolve

So long my soul has been tramped, muddied in the waters

of lords who never knew me a Negus

A Prince, who once surveyed my Savannahs of anthills and darting impalas,

Of crouching leopards who felt the sharpness of the hunter’s spear

But into thy coastal arms I return, through Elmina’s ”gate of yes return”

Thy radiant smile, my bearing found

Thy coconut water my thirst quenched

And in thy gentle breeze a moment restored!

Adjei  Agyei-Baah  (Ghana) 

Picture source: www.facebook.com/jadiliafrika