Read Online Collected Poems by Chinua Achebe - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Chinua Achebe
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faith?
Then I saw it
Poised in courageous impartiality
Between the primordial quarrel of Earth
And Sky striving bravely to sink roots
Into objectivity midair in stone.
I thought the rain, prime mover
To this enterprise, someday would rise in power
And deliver its ward in delirious waterfall
Toward earth below. But every rainy day
Little playful floods assembled on the slab,
Danced, parted round its feet,
United again, and passed.
It went from purple to sickly green
Before it died.
Today I see it still—
Dry, wire-thin in sun and dust of the dry months—
Headstone on tiny debris of passionate courage.
Aba, 1968
Pine Tree in Spring
(for Leon Damas)
Pine tree
flag bearer
of green memory
across the breach of a desolate hour
Loyal tree
that stood guard
alone in austere emeraldry
over Nature's recumbent standard
Pine tree
lost now in the shade
of traitors decked out flamboyantly
marching back unabashed to the colors they betrayed
Fine tree
erect and trustworthy
what school can teach me
your silent, stubborn fidelity?
The Explorer
Like a dawn unheralded at midnight
it opened abruptly before me—a rough
circular clearing, high cliffs of deep
forest guarding it in amber-tinted spell
A long journey's end it was though how
long and from where seemed unclear,
unimportant; one fact alone mattered
now—that body so well preserved
which on seeing I knew had brought me there
The circumstance of death
was vague but a floating hint
pointed to a disaster in the air
elusively
But where, if so, the litter
of violent wreckage? That rough-edged
gypsum trough bearing it like a dead
chrysalis reposing till now in full
encapsulation was broken by a cool
hand for this lying in state. All else
was in order except the leg missing
neatly at knee joint
even the white schoolboy dress
immaculate in the thin
yellow light; the face in particular
was perfect having caught nor fear
nor agony at the fatal moment.
Clear-sighted with a clarity
rarely encountered in dreams
my Explorer-Self stood a little
distant but somewhat fulfilled; behind
him a long misty quest: unanswered
questions put to sleep needing
no longer to be raised. Enough
in that trapped silence of a freak
dawn to come face-to-face suddenly
with a body I didn't even know
I lost.
Agostinho Neto
Neto, were you no more
Than the middle one favored by fortune
In children's riddle; Kwame
Striding ahead to accost
Demons; behind you a laggard third
As yet unnamed, of twisted fingers?
No! Your secure strides
Were hard earned. Your feet
Learned their fierce balance
In violent slopes of humiliation;
Your delicate hands, patiently
Groomed for finest incisions,
Were commandeered brusquely to kill,
Your melodious voice to battle cry.
Perhaps your family and friends
Knew a merry flash cracking the gloom
We see in pictures but I prefer
And will keep the darker legend.
For I have seen how
Half a millennium of alien rape
And murder can stamp a smile
On the vacant face of the fool,
The sinister grin of Africa's idiot-kings
Who oversee in obscene palaces of gold
The butchery of their own people.
Neto, I sing your passing, I,
Timid requisitioner of your vast
Armory's most congenial supply.
What shall I sing? A dirge answering
The gloom? No, I will sing tearful songs
Of joy; I will celebrate
The Man who rode a trinity
Of awesome fates to the cause
Of our trampled race!
Thou Healer, Soldier, and Poet!
Poems About War
The First Shot
That lone rifle-shot anonymous
in the dark striding chest-high
through a nervous suburb at the break
of our season of thunders will yet
steep its flight and lodge
more firmly than the greater noises
ahead in the forehead of memory.
A Mother in a Refugee Camp
No Madonna and Child could touch
Her tenderness for a son
She soon would have to forget….
The air was heavy with odors of diarrhea,
Of unwashed children with washed-out ribs
And dried-up bottoms waddling in labored
Then I saw it
Poised in courageous impartiality
Between the primordial quarrel of Earth
And Sky striving bravely to sink roots
Into objectivity midair in stone.
I thought the rain, prime mover
To this enterprise, someday would rise in power
And deliver its ward in delirious waterfall
Toward earth below. But every rainy day
Little playful floods assembled on the slab,
Danced, parted round its feet,
United again, and passed.
It went from purple to sickly green
Before it died.
Today I see it still—
Dry, wire-thin in sun and dust of the dry months—
Headstone on tiny debris of passionate courage.
Aba, 1968
Pine Tree in Spring
(for Leon Damas)
Pine tree
flag bearer
of green memory
across the breach of a desolate hour
Loyal tree
that stood guard
alone in austere emeraldry
over Nature's recumbent standard
Pine tree
lost now in the shade
of traitors decked out flamboyantly
marching back unabashed to the colors they betrayed
Fine tree
erect and trustworthy
what school can teach me
your silent, stubborn fidelity?
The Explorer
Like a dawn unheralded at midnight
it opened abruptly before me—a rough
circular clearing, high cliffs of deep
forest guarding it in amber-tinted spell
A long journey's end it was though how
long and from where seemed unclear,
unimportant; one fact alone mattered
now—that body so well preserved
which on seeing I knew had brought me there
The circumstance of death
was vague but a floating hint
pointed to a disaster in the air
elusively
But where, if so, the litter
of violent wreckage? That rough-edged
gypsum trough bearing it like a dead
chrysalis reposing till now in full
encapsulation was broken by a cool
hand for this lying in state. All else
was in order except the leg missing
neatly at knee joint
even the white schoolboy dress
immaculate in the thin
yellow light; the face in particular
was perfect having caught nor fear
nor agony at the fatal moment.
Clear-sighted with a clarity
rarely encountered in dreams
my Explorer-Self stood a little
distant but somewhat fulfilled; behind
him a long misty quest: unanswered
questions put to sleep needing
no longer to be raised. Enough
in that trapped silence of a freak
dawn to come face-to-face suddenly
with a body I didn't even know
I lost.
Agostinho Neto
Neto, were you no more
Than the middle one favored by fortune
In children's riddle; Kwame
Striding ahead to accost
Demons; behind you a laggard third
As yet unnamed, of twisted fingers?
No! Your secure strides
Were hard earned. Your feet
Learned their fierce balance
In violent slopes of humiliation;
Your delicate hands, patiently
Groomed for finest incisions,
Were commandeered brusquely to kill,
Your melodious voice to battle cry.
Perhaps your family and friends
Knew a merry flash cracking the gloom
We see in pictures but I prefer
And will keep the darker legend.
For I have seen how
Half a millennium of alien rape
And murder can stamp a smile
On the vacant face of the fool,
The sinister grin of Africa's idiot-kings
Who oversee in obscene palaces of gold
The butchery of their own people.
Neto, I sing your passing, I,
Timid requisitioner of your vast
Armory's most congenial supply.
What shall I sing? A dirge answering
The gloom? No, I will sing tearful songs
Of joy; I will celebrate
The Man who rode a trinity
Of awesome fates to the cause
Of our trampled race!
Thou Healer, Soldier, and Poet!
Poems About War
The First Shot
That lone rifle-shot anonymous
in the dark striding chest-high
through a nervous suburb at the break
of our season of thunders will yet
steep its flight and lodge
more firmly than the greater noises
ahead in the forehead of memory.
A Mother in a Refugee Camp
No Madonna and Child could touch
Her tenderness for a son
She soon would have to forget….
The air was heavy with odors of diarrhea,
Of unwashed children with washed-out ribs
And dried-up bottoms waddling in labored
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