P.M Quinns - How Could I Forget?

Adapted from the poem Ọṣun (below), in my book, The Soothsayer's Requiem. It is a tribute to the Yoruba orisha Ọṣun, associated with love, sexuality, fertility, femininity, water, destiny, divination, purity, beauty, prosperity, and the Ọṣun River. Ọṣun Your song awakens a fire within, You pull tight in my heart like bow strings, Echoes of the breaking annulet, Tokens of my last glimpse plague my mind. Ọṣun of the waters in doeskin, Ọṣun of purity and the springs, Ọṣun of love, how could I forget? I know the song is old, but we’re twined. Children have forgotten the old song, And the old struggle to find the words. I recall when I first swam the stream, I recall your face in the water, Fore twas stirred by the cathedral gong. Ọṣun, you blessed our farms and the herds, But this land loathes you like a bad dream, She is abashed over your matter. You may range freely in this old heart, Drift free where the stream crosses my land. Usher your shoals to my barrages, Let this song reach down to the seafloor. Your spawn and you have drifted apart, Now we sing you back to the hinterland, We shall sing you home ‘cross the floodways. Ọṣun, till we see you by the shore. ©P.M Quinns