Akanni, Where Is Your Dance?

Akanni ọmọ Akankẹ́, Akankẹ́ obìnrin bi ọkùnrin

Can you keep a secret?

Secrecy is worth ten thousand titles if not a kingdom

And an ọmọlúwàbí always pays his debt

Akanni, can you know a thing and never speak of it?

Patience turns a waiting lover into a spinster

& Time takes away the novelty of her eventual marriage

Akanni, is now not the time to take a chance?

Impatience turns an enduring lover’s justness into guilt

Now, nobody remembers the pain that forced her blade

Should she have trusted time to bring better tidings?

Ọ̀rẹ́, where the walls have ears, secrets become mouthed songs

Songs that only the initiated know the dance to

& In that garden of concealed meanings, metaphors and parables bloom

Akanni, I have sung songs, where is your dance?

Have you heard of the songbird whose call the heavenly beings await?

It is I, Alani, the love child of Akinyẹle and Abẹ̀ni

If the rise of an ordinary man spells the downfall of a King

Should he now refuse to soar?

Should he trust time to bring better tidings?

All to no purpose is the wait for èbùré’s second fruits

Only once does it bloom and then it perishes

Akanni, is now not the time to take a chance?