The Geography of Love

Your grace and poise overwhelms me like a tsunami

Your lambent eyes flicker like hurricane lamps

In the throes of a tropical storm or line squall

Your breasts bob and heave

Like beacons on the waves of the Atlantic

At Takoradi Harbour

Your behinds are like the drumlins left

Behind by glaciations

Or like mammary hills of Oblongo and Ningo near Accra

Your serrated neck like yardang corridors

Through which the unseen wind blasts

Your slender arms like the Nile snaking

Its way north over the Sudd region in Southern Sudan

Your navel like an oasis in the Libyan Desert

Your thighs like giant timber trees in the

Thick tropical forest of Sierra Leone, Liberia,

Cameroun and Congo DR,

The gap in your front teeth like a

Ravine in the Rift Valley of East Africa

Or like the gaping gorge at the mighty Victoria

Falls in Zambia

The crown of your head like the

Umbrella-shaped acacia tree tops of the Savannah

The hair on your cunt like the

Tall leafy green elephant grass of the

Niger-bend swamps of Timbuctoo in the rainy season

Your lips curve like the ox-bow lakes

And meanders of the Nile in its lower

Lacustrine/riverine course

Again, your lips are like the recumbent

Folds on the Atlas and Drakensberg Mountains

Your fingers fan out like distributaries

Of the Niger Delta

The ebbs and flows of your breathing

Are like the breakers at Krokrobite Beach near Accra,

When you utter a word,

It has the resonance of a simoon on the Sahara Desert

The colour of your skin

Is a cross between the grayish gigantic

Granite tors

And the dark-brown jagged shales on the shores

Of Kromantse in Central Region of Ghana

Your square slender shoulders like the

Table Mountain towering over Cape Town

Your legs are like the massive columns

Of the valley of the Pharaohs in Abu Simbel

On the Nile in Luxor, Egypt

Your feminine figure is crafted like

An earlier version of a Motorola cell phone

Or like the guitar,

Or like one of the ornately carved wooden

Statuettes made by the master woodcarvers

In Livingstone in Zambia,

Your eyelashes and eyelids are like

Sweeps of crescent-shaped barkhans on the Sahara Desert

Your smile is like the dreamy and

Pleasant Athii Plains near Nairobi in Kenya

Your shapely legs converge at your torso

Like the confluence of the Niger and

Benue at Lokoja in Nigeria

The Sweetness of your lips like honey

Or local jam on tea bread from Nsawam in Ghana

Your nostrils like the entrances to the

Caves at Abrobiano in Komenda, Central Ghana

Your tummy as flat as the Okavango Pan in

Botswana

When you walk past, it is like an

Ostrich inspecting a guard of honour in

Windhoek, Namibia

Or like the wildbeest and gazelles strutting

Past on their annual migration on the Masai

Mara in Kenya

When in flight, your canter is like the

Zebra on the run, pursued by the carnivores,

When the setting sun casts your shadow on the ground

It is like the stilted masquerades

Doing their yuletide dance in Winneba, Central Ghana

Your whole body is a mosaic of love potions

When you dance, your arms and legs make

Intricate movements

Yeah, conveying silent messages of love in all directions

The message that you are ripe

You need the vibes from the guys and suitors

Yeah, they come forth with different

Guiles to woo your love,

Alas, most walk away nonplussed

And befuddled,

You ridicule them for their crass stupidity,

Oh, love, you are too hot for their wit

And I wonder who will solve this

African conundrum of love

By Kwesi Sakyi