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IFEGI-OKU (WEEK 33) - "Obi's Mess" |
WEEK 33: OBI'S MESS
Obi did not indeed forget
The insolence of his jaded wives
He held a grudge against the three
Three times the love heaped on His Supreme
His Supreme, who now lived with him
Called him "Obi' afront girls and wives
The two behaved as if sixteen
Worse – as if no one else mattered at all
For two years straight Obi shone his gaze
On His Supreme who miscarried twice
Each lost babe was a single male
Proving Obi's words on that fateful feast
Were not musings from a maddened man
Hope grew and grew in Obi's heart
Only in time, he consoled himself
Before out popped a healthy heir
In the meantime, he crooned to Number Four
Silly songs he wrote that brightened her heart
He saw to it that her needs were met
Conscripting the household to her beck and call
He made some daughters cook for her
Made two others prepare her bath
Made three others wash her clothes
Ifegi-oku he bid tend her hair
He ceased altogether sex with the others
Saving his seed for where it mattered
At this present time, Four is huge again
Seven months pregnant with an apparent heir?
Obi's love and care of His Supreme
Was indeed a sore in the Lesser Wives' eyes
This state of affairs in the man's household
Could not continue, could not much hold
Or so the three wished and hoped
Each neglected wife handled her pain
In ways that assured physical pain
If Obi should ever find them out
Ifegi-oku's mother took a lover
A youngish chap a village over
Number One prayed fervently to The Gods
To return the house to the way it was
No sin in that save she steals Obi's yams
And offers to The Gods in the dead of night
Doing crazy dances as part of the rites
The Gods do nothing and need more yams
But it was Number Two the most creative
She took no lovers and sacrificed nothing
But each miscarriage she was its engineer
Finding secret ways to infect the sauce
Before it reached the mouth of Four
With the herbal root of the Azure tree
A tree that is used for unwanted births
If known the village would take her life
But all this trouble is really Obi's mess
For it was written in the Rules of Us
A man with numerous co-consorts
Should make no distinction, treat all as one
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