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