Let's Read Poetry #35: Moonlight Play

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Source

The night is calm
And the moon is full up in the sky.
We file out like soldier ants
Into the village square
And form circles and chain-gangs
To play akpakoro.

Nocturnal insects and birds
Chirp and cheer.

Young girls gather in twos and threes
To play uga
Clapping their hands
And skipping and moving their legs
To the rhythm.

Able young men test their strength
On the wrestling arena
While flexible girls luyhely
Move their waists in dance
To the rhythm of the clapping of hands.

Crawling babies crawl about
Or sleep peacefully on mats spreaf
On pavements outside the house
Under the protective eyes of their mothers
Who themselves sit with fathers
And less-daring children
Telling folktales and sucking in the night breeze.

Aged men and women
Relax in their agada
Dreaming, reminiscing old times
When they had been boys and girls
Like these ones chasing
One another up and down
In the Moonlight thinking :
They'll be like us some day.

Meanwhile boys and girls
Wiser than their age
Move further away from the madding crowd
And from the watching eyes of elders
Into darker corners
To do forbidden things.