ODE TO THE FICKLE MUSE By Suleiman Zailani

 

The Poet 

Suleiman Zailani is one of  the pioneer members of ANA Kano. He, about two decades ago, alongside Ismaila Garba, Khalid Imam, Umma Aliyu Musa, Profesor A.I. Tanko, Professor Yusuf Adamu, and Faruk Sarkinfada, was among the regulars in the British Council sponsored creative writers forum in Kano. He was also prominent in appearances under the "Bookshelf" column in weekly trust edited by Ibrahim Sheme. Zailani was fortunate to have been granted a merit award from ANA Kano when Professor Yusuf Adamu was the chairman. He is a graduate of Mining Engineering with an MBA from Bayero University Kano. Zailani is presently a Deputy Director and Head Public Affairs Department in the Petroleum Training Institute Effurun Warri, Delta State. His first published collection, "Eruption from within and other poems," came out in 2005. He is working on his second collection and is optimistic that it will be ready by the end of this year in sha Allah. Incidentally, he has never attended a literature class in his life and only discovered that he has a flair for poetry when he composed a poem with all its inherent literary devices without knowing what a poem really was in his teens. Zailani is from Zaria Kaduna State and is happily married with four children.

The Poem 

ODE TO THE FICKLE MUSE

Sometimes the poem finally berths 

After the arduous trip

Through the deep sea of the troubled mind 

Sometimes it smoothly glides

Like the Eagle on joyful flight

To land the golden verse

Sometimes in vain we clutch

The wily word that melts

In ether of lost memory

Sometimes in despair we watch 

Chrysalis of that perfect poem

Inspite the fifty poems pledge

Through the stretch of barren spells:

The muse hidden in wasted days

Sometimes with ease it comes

Through the tranquility of our souls

When love is home at last!