ALÁSE AND LAMENTATIONS OF THE ONION

ALÁSE SPEAKS
Now, I don’t need your opinions
Just get me the onion
The rounded bulgy onion
Come, you and all, be my companions
ONION SPEAKS
I go thin and dry as days run by

To get my babies watered and white
Our common rhizomes and frail earth
We have seen reduced to mere trampling figures
You summoned my meagre self, oh Aláse
You intended to woo my wailing offspring
You called the meeting of the cockroach with the vultures
You beckoned on the buckling geckos for fake witnessing
Aláse! You are thirsty for my white blood of my babies
You called a meeting, yet hailing your weapons
Your arms, your dazzling little devils, smiling at us
Aláse! Please! Consider, consider our years of treaty
THE OBSERVER SPEAKS
Aláse needs not my opinions nor your intuitions
I am a friend to life and a betrothal to death
You and your engulfed broods are guests for the feast
Come, these curvy layers of freshness, come and die!
ALÁSE SPEAKS YET AGAIN
Onion! This is no treachery, stop the moans!
I called, upon guts for savoury and royalty
You are a famed face in this primordial kingdom
Other lords of the hot red ocean succumb their wills
This is an alliance of a cohesive prospect, ‘oni-on’
Why dread my jolly chainmail; armaments of the great Aláse
And, don’t call my armours cunning weapons of revulsion
Brace up, you will be sever to mingle with nobles in the iron land
Onion, I know the threat of your heart
You will draw out my tears as you release your cherished flesh
Ah ah, I gladly will free the rivers that aim my sight for passage
For this beautiful voyage, we all must pay
Onion! What say you of lordess Pepper?
Her flattered blush and her luxurious progeny
All gave in to be crushed with the rage of the merciless Eléro
My hands too, were made to sing against their sincere wishes
Now onion, let us at this time wipe our tears
Let’s forget our sorrows and walk through this phase
The king wants us gorgeously dressed in his banquet
The eternal feast we pursue in this empire is worth our silent salient pains
- Success Timothy Ayo
PS: Aláse is a Yoruba word for ‘Cook’. Eléro literally means ‘owner of the grinding machine’ or simply ‘grinder’, ‘mixer’.


By Success Timothy Ayoola