A Grammar of Lagos

All cities yield their grammar,
even Lagos, sixteen years on.
I have learnt the concrete nouns
of places, the conjunctions of bridges,
Eko, Carter, Third Mainland.
I know the chaos of pronouns
inflecting themselves at bus stops.
I have heard the roaring verbs
conjugating on the Marina, fluent
in the gin-soaked pidgin of danfos,
the vanilla pidgin of jeeps.

I know that life in Lagos
is lived adverbially,
busily, showily, hopefully.
Lagos, babel of adjectives,
amorphous, arcane, mercantile, plain,
from terrestrial Ikoyi to aquatic Makoko.

Street by street I have walked its prepositions,
from CMS across the Macgregor Canal to Dolphin.
I have grown accustomed to the dialect
of houses, the shorthand of scenery.
I have seen the sands of Bar Beach edited
by the sibilant ocean.

Lagos yields its grammar,
eventually.