Mbari Dancers

I With faces painted of edeala natural cream With feet flourishing in undulating dance-steps The proud dictates of the restive drums Where the Ikolo performers are on the thrive Each in readiness to out-pipe his neighbor – The dancers come digging it out with the sun With the hunters taking their spears to the sky! Young Mbari dancers, robust, eager & joyous Awaiting the life-panthers that must come home After the drum-beats in the hunter’s forest – ’Tis like a gathering of spirits & humans At the age-long esplanade of the clan, for lads & lasses, fathers & mothers, young & old, all Have come to the roost like a family of chickens. Dancing in pairs, in circles & diverse angular Movements, a genius of the earth: each dancer Makes her to-&-fro design-gaits & flights Like some nymphs in dream-land gardens Their gaits are swift & in skillful harmony Following the restive palms of the drummers! Ah, old Emuka gets at it, the renowned piper At his high zest, taking Mbari eagle-dancers To the heights of lofty Iroko-dance-branches An embodiment of every echo-throat’d piper! & a dancer dances as if it were her last dance; & ’tis a full sun-burnt commotion of a dance; O, isn’t it an half-human, half-spirit dance?