#PoetryMasterClass: “My Lord, Tell Me Where To Keep Your Bribe?” By Niyi Osundare

[Originally published on Sahara Reporters on Oct 26, 2016 and culled from saharareporters.com]

A poem by the renowned Nigerian poet Niyi Osundare.

My Lord

   Please tell me where to keep your bribe?

Do I drop it in your venerable chambers

Or carry the heavy booty to your immaculate mansion

126. Floetry by JulietKego: A Perfect Kiss […with the universe]

I often think that there’s a sacred time when dusk kisses dawn. When the world sleeps and our higher selves awaken; open to downloading epiphanies from the still, quiet, sacred voice within. And sometimes, if we are truly present, we experience the fullness of being-ness as we wake up into the arms of the universe.

Into the arms of a loving Creator. Our souls stir, our spirits sing, our hearts stop in stunned silence, as we witness the heaven kiss the earth, in what must be an ancient, age-long tradition.

Poetry Masterclass – Rabindranath Tagore: Unending Love

“Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add color to my sunset sky.”
― Rabindranath Tagore, Stray Birds
Poem:“Unending Love” by Rabindranath Tagore

I seem to have loved you in numberless forms, numberless times…
In life after life, in age after age, forever.
My spellbound heart has made and remade the necklace of songs,
That you take as a gift, wear round your neck in your many forms,
In life after life, in age after age, forever.Whenever I hear old chronicles of love, it’s age-old pain,
It’s ancient tale of being apart or together.
As I stare on and on into the past, in the end you emerge,
Clad in the light of a pole-star, piercing the darkness of time.
You become an image of what is remembered forever.

You and I have floated here on the stream that brings from the fount.
At the heart of time, love of one for another.
We have played along side millions of lovers,
Shared in the same shy sweetness of meeting,
the distressful tears of farewell,
Old love but in shapes that renew and renew forever.

Today it is heaped at your feet, it has found its end in you
The love of all man’s days both past and forever:
Universal joy, universal sorrow, universal life.
The memories of all loves merging with this one love of ours –
And the songs of every poet past and forever.”

Rabindranath Tagore, Selected Poems