Nigerian Nocturne 1 Below corrugated iron sheets The cement-mixer sleeps Like some futurist rhinoceros Or prehistoric tank. Moon’s An amulet time has thumbed Into a kind of face. One blink And it might become an eerie drum Whose beat is silence. Still The near beyond pulsates With fiddle-legged crickets, Bullfrogs’ comic bass Now sleeplessly I ponder How to define these colours For which day has not yet Found a name – horizon bars, The shadowy gape of nim trees As stars take up position Behind hump-backed clouds, O sights and sounds lasting Far into the morrow, My head an attic cluttered With phrasal jetsam, Mirrors turning dusty, Furniture that does not   quite fit... 2 Dark, then, be my umbrella Shelter me with your coolness which is the loom of hills distilled Solitude Don’t worry yourself so You’re doing fine here where frangipani close their eyes awhile and everything’s drowsy with the scent of trees From verandah to sky then back Night goes bush (Kaduna, Northern Nigeria) Martin Bennett | Mudlark No. 12 Contents | Arabia Deserta (Riyadh to Al-Kharj Road)