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You may have encountered them too.
Two black middle-aged men
on Wembley High Road
walking side by side,
portly with the accretions of age,
weathered faces, the visage of sage.
You may spot their striking similarities first,
then their milder differences:
how one is clean shaven &
the other wears a stubble.
They don’t smile often.
Science insists that monozygotic twins result
when a zygote cleaves after fertilisation
but cannot explain a lifetime of reparation,
cannot explain their affirmative reconciliation.
But the gods know
that a man or a woman
should not be alone so they privileged
these two, lifelong companions.
The Yoruba know, too,
the beauty of preordained mutualism
& deified the symmetry of twinning
& conjured a myth.
In Igbo-Ora,
every family is blessed
& visited upon by the god of twins,
but science insists that it must be their yams.
Black-eyed beans
slow cooked in red oil suffices,
the Yoruba burst into song,
preening with desire
for double blessings.
I know, too,
of the blessings they bring
as a sib preceding twins—
that privilege
is indeed my biggest win.
From Affection & Other Accidents, first published in 2022 by RADI8 LTD
Dami is a fine lyricists and his poems are girdled with well blended strokes of relatable motifs