with water, legs shook, groin split in two. Just before

he collapsed, his daddy wiped his mouth with a napkin,

cleared his throat, said, ‘May that be a lesson to you.’

Zenobia took him to bed, but before he heard her say

‘I love you but you must behave yourself,’ he was asleep.

CRUEL HARMATTANS conquered the south, sweeping

down from the Hausa desert, each grain of sand a scorpion,

whipping dust into spiral storms of hot air, dry heat,

thick with swirling particles; the city turned in on itself,

shut door, shuttered window, until the rains came,

swelling crumbling soil. And the boy grew

into the hard green fruit of the slim paw paw tree.

And when the sun graced this island which pulled

people to its shores like bees to a honeycomb,

Taiwo dreamt of exploring the worlds these migrants

left to memory: Lebanon, Libya, China, Syria, India,

Ghana, Sierra Leone, Gambia, Europe.

He took his sandaled youth to Apapa Docks, watched

the émigrés disembark from the huge cargo ships

that streamed into port, horns resounding for miles.

He taunted the ‘sailor’s children’, pale, raggedy products

of prostitute and European who lived on the streets.

If he wandered too near the axis of port life, policemen

in pith helmets, khaki shorts, long woollen socks, shooed

him away. Taiwo took off, skinny legs at a canter,

travelled across his island from port to lagoon to swamp.

He luxuriated in the warmth of his sunlit home, as if a voice

deep, olden or from his future tense was telling him

to remember, enjoy, childhood would not last forever.

TAIWO

I AM A BOY, I go like fire, why walk when you can run?

Watch me race past Mama Lopes in Tinubu Square,

at her stool frying akara bean cakes for over fifty years,

my mouth waters as I whiff past. I hear the organist

in the cathedral then the muezzin in Shitta Mosque, dodge

kids playing hockey with rams’ horns on sticks, girls

playing the skipping-clapping game of Oya, and old men

playing Ayo under a guava tree. In Carrena Street I catch

the leering, firefly eyes of Ma Amponsah as her slurred

voice suggests I partake of her gin: I leap across the road,

collide with the sanitary inspector in his creased grey suit,

‘Pardon, Sir,’ I say into my chin and, when I look up,

Laurenço Nobre, the dog-catcher, stands before me

carrying a noose threaded through a bamboo pole.

I head off down Catholic Mission Street where Ahmed,

a boy with no legs, whizzes by on his wooden trolley

on wooden wheels, I race whippet-fast past musicians playing

Omolé and on to the Race Course where we celebrate

Empire Day, dash down to the Marina, avoiding the wrath

of Mr Pickering outside his store. (He calls us picanninies,

we call him ‘dog-lips’ before scarpering.) At the beach

I see older cousin Sam among the palm trees and canoes;