Today I speaklight because yesterdays I listened dark

In February 2024, Dr Yewande Okuleye read her poem ‘Today I speaklight because yesterdays I listened dark’ at an event called ‘Shakespeare’s First Folio: Bringing the Book Alive.’

Bringing the Book Alive was hosted by the Friends of Senate House Library as part of the exhibition.

You can read the full poem below.

'Today I speaklight because yesterdays I listened dark' by Yewande Okuleye

After the night stars your day starts when your dawn breaks - Yorùbá Queen Mother speaks.

Nobody. “No one placed a loving hand on my swollen belly. I felt a
warm blot. And that was my lot. It was too late.” She speaks.

foolish young girl
turns wise woman today
unfurl red white
exquisite midwife
of lives lived through
lives lived by many lives
are these all lies?

pale ideas swarm
bloated clouds obnubilate
dainty spells unburrow
like earthworms mating in rain
earth breathe unease
million plus one eyes protrude to deliver us from sin
alas a slow row pricking of alabaster skin
I wishe thee ease of all thy paine

we breathe our last breath dead delirious
different times we meet again
two souls contort
monozygotic twins
conjoined memories expunged
when you feel the payne
of their burning flesh you impressed
smelt like the glow of their bellows
that howled at night in search of shade

will charred deeds revive?
atone the few by the many?
who waits for me to caress magnetic truths
across time I stand in front of?
I stand well
òtító behind me
ó wà l’ẹ́ ẹ̀hìn mi
assurance envelops me
today I speak

today I remember today I honour today I speakact I today without delay
Anne Hathaway

Translation

òtító: Truth

ó wà l’ẹ́ ẹ̀hìn mi: Something exists behind me

Reprinted from Anne-thology: Poems Re-Presenting Anne Shakespeare, eds Paul Edmondson, Aaron Kent, Chris Laoutaris and Katherine Scheil, with permission from Broken Sleep Books (2023).