Collected Poems Read Free Page A

one of my blood!
    Brave one of Igbo land!
    Brave one in the middle of so much blood!
    Owner of riches in the dwelling place of spirit
    Okigbo is the one I am calling!
    Nzomalizo!
    In memory of the poet Christopher Okigbo (1932–1967)
Translated from the Igbo by Ifeanyi Menkiti
After a War
    After a war life catches
    desperately at passing
    hints of normalcy like
    vines entwining a hollow
    twig; its famished roots
    close on rubble and every
    piece of broken glass.
    Irritations we used
    to curse return to joyous
    tables like prodigals home
    from the city … The meter man
    serving my maiden bill brought
    a friendly face to my circle
    of sullen strangers and me
    smiling gratefully
    to the door.
    After a war
    we clutch at watery
    scum pulsating on listless
    eddies of our spent
    deluge…. Convalescent
    dancers rising too soon
    to rejoin their circle dance
    our powerless feet intent
    as before but no longer
    adept contrive only
    half-remembered
    eccentric steps.
    After years
    of pressing death
    and dizzy last-hour reprieves
    we're glad to dump our fears
    and our perilous gains together
    in one shallow grave and flee
    the same rueful way we came
    straight home to haunted revelry.
    Christmas 1971

Poems Not About War
Love Song (for Anna)
    Bear with me my love
    in the hour of my silence;
    the air is crisscrossed
    by loud omens and songbirds
    fearing reprisals of middle day
    have hidden away their notes
    wrapped up in leaves
    of cocoyam…. What song shall I
    sing to you my love when
    a choir of squatting toads
    turns the stomach of day with
    goitrous adoration of an infested
    swamp and purple-headed
    vultures at home stand
    sentry on the rooftop?
    I will sing only in waiting
    silence your power to bear
    my dream for me in your quiet
    eyes and wrap the dust of our blistered
    feet in golden anklets ready
    for the return someday of our
    banished dance.
Love Cycle
    At dawn slowly
    the Sun withdraws his
    long misty arms of
    embrace. Happy lovers
    whose exertions leave
    no aftertaste nor slush
    of love's combustion; Earth
    perfumed in dewdrop
    fragrance wakes
    to whispers of
    soft-eyed light….
    Later he
    will wear out his temper
    plowing the vast acres
    of heaven and take it
    out on her in burning
    darts of anger. Long
    accustomed to such caprice
    she waits patiently
    for evening when thoughts
    of another night will
    restore his mellowness
    and her power
    over him.
Question
    Angled sunbeam lowered
    like Jacob's ladder through
    sky's peephole pierced in the roof
    to my silent floor and bared feet.
    Are these your creatures
    these crowding specks
    stomping your lighted corridor
    to a remote sun, like doped
    acrobatic angels gyrating
    at needlepoint to divert a high
    unamused god? Or am I
    sole stranger in a twilight room
    I called my own overrun
    and possessed long ago by myriads more
    as yet invisible in all
    this surrounding penumbra?
Answer
    I broke at last
    the terror-fringed fascination
    that bound my ancient gaze
    to those crowding faces
    of plunder and seized my
    remnant life in a miracle
    of decision between white-
    collar hands and shook it
    like a cheap watch
    in my ear and threw it down
    beside me on the earth floor
    and rose to my feet. I
    made of their shoulders
    and heads bobbing up and down
    a new ladder and leaned
    it on their sweating flanks
    and ascended till midair
    my hands so new to harshness
    could grapple the roughness of a prickly
    day and quench the source
    that fed turbulence to their
    feet. I made a dramatic
    descent that day landing
    backways into crouching shadowsinto potsherds of broken trance. I
    flung open long-disused windows
    and doors and saw my hut
    new-swept by rainbow brooms
    of sunlight become my home again
    on whose trysting floor waited
    my proud vibrant life.
Beware, Soul Brother
    We are the men of soul
    men of song we measure out
    our joys and agonies
    too, our long, long passion week
    in paces of the dance. We have
    come to know from surfeit of suffering
    that even the Cross need not be
    a dead