Sonnet by Way of the Sea
I am pummeling down Carter bridge, where the wind catches you by surprise,
where automobiles whip past as though propelled by an evil wind,
striving to get to town to become one with the evening rush, and beyond me,
at the foot of the bridge, the city punishes: choking smell of smoked fish mingles
with the stench of unwashed bodies of the fishwives unleashing justice
to the evening air, unforgiving in their vengeance. For the briefest moment,
I stop to take a peek at the river below, two boys on a canoe row past,
one casts his net, blind for a moment, to the rushing world beyond him.
Lift up your heads, o ye gates, the river seems to say,
cast your sorrows into me, for no ailment survives my alkalinity.
On the far side, the waterbody is marked by a reflection of the polaris overhead,
hidden in a streak of stars, but fished out by these young seafarers skilled
in nautical ways. One points to the starlit constellation and seems to say to his companion:
Follow the North Star, dear lover. For this is how shipwrecked seamen find their way home.
Zerubbabel
My name is Zerubbabel. I return as a stranger to the house of my birth
where the word for death is same
as the word for joy.
Joy, the equivalent of what you'd hear
bursting through window panes, set in the dwarf houses
of the village, at nightfall.
The joys of things that once existed in this space
but have long fled to the other side of the divide
where the hills whisper softly into your ears as you descend them.
On this quiet day, I am greeted by the shrill calls of crickets
and even the door, creaking against the aging of the winds.
I put my hand on the cold wall and try to remember
the faces of all the people I ever loved from this old house,
who have died from a hereditary disease
or in their sleep,
or who have fled from it and have not been seen ever since.
I call each person's name, but what remains
of the echo, is barely the width
of a waning moon.
And outside, there is no soft blanket of grass
to keep me company,
only the harsh, dusty ground, strewn with stones
only the shadows of algae-colored walls
telling ghost stories to each other,
in suspended tones.
I imagine, for a moment, a different house-of-my-birth,
painted blue with the sea, alive to the beckoning
of the wind in the daytime
and a raven chorus challenging the night.
I imagine this house never growing old,
perched on the shore like a pier
and vouschafed the sea for safekeeping,
where a gentle music of many waters take turns
to spiderweb its basement,
time after time
as I depart.
BIO:
Chisom Okafor is a Nigerian poet, editor and clinical nutritionist. He has received nominations for the Brunel International African Poetry Prize, the Gerald Kraak Prize and Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets and has also received support from the Commonwealth Foundation. He presently works as editor for Libretto Magazine.
I am pummeling down Carter bridge, where the wind catches you by surprise,
where automobiles whip past as though propelled by an evil wind,
striving to get to town to become one with the evening rush, and beyond me,
at the foot of the bridge, the city punishes: choking smell of smoked fish mingles
with the stench of unwashed bodies of the fishwives unleashing justice
to the evening air, unforgiving in their vengeance. For the briefest moment,
I stop to take a peek at the river below, two boys on a canoe row past,
one casts his net, blind for a moment, to the rushing world beyond him.
Lift up your heads, o ye gates, the river seems to say,
cast your sorrows into me, for no ailment survives my alkalinity.
On the far side, the waterbody is marked by a reflection of the polaris overhead,
hidden in a streak of stars, but fished out by these young seafarers skilled
in nautical ways. One points to the starlit constellation and seems to say to his companion:
Follow the North Star, dear lover. For this is how shipwrecked seamen find their way home.
Zerubbabel
My name is Zerubbabel. I return as a stranger to the house of my birth
where the word for death is same
as the word for joy.
Joy, the equivalent of what you'd hear
bursting through window panes, set in the dwarf houses
of the village, at nightfall.
The joys of things that once existed in this space
but have long fled to the other side of the divide
where the hills whisper softly into your ears as you descend them.
On this quiet day, I am greeted by the shrill calls of crickets
and even the door, creaking against the aging of the winds.
I put my hand on the cold wall and try to remember
the faces of all the people I ever loved from this old house,
who have died from a hereditary disease
or in their sleep,
or who have fled from it and have not been seen ever since.
I call each person's name, but what remains
of the echo, is barely the width
of a waning moon.
And outside, there is no soft blanket of grass
to keep me company,
only the harsh, dusty ground, strewn with stones
only the shadows of algae-colored walls
telling ghost stories to each other,
in suspended tones.
I imagine, for a moment, a different house-of-my-birth,
painted blue with the sea, alive to the beckoning
of the wind in the daytime
and a raven chorus challenging the night.
I imagine this house never growing old,
perched on the shore like a pier
and vouschafed the sea for safekeeping,
where a gentle music of many waters take turns
to spiderweb its basement,
time after time
as I depart.
BIO:
Chisom Okafor is a Nigerian poet, editor and clinical nutritionist. He has received nominations for the Brunel International African Poetry Prize, the Gerald Kraak Prize and Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets and has also received support from the Commonwealth Foundation. He presently works as editor for Libretto Magazine.
