Poems from An African ElegyBen Okri
It is hoped and expected that by representing a selection of Ben Okri's poems we can help to stimulate some more interest in this great writer's work, both poetry and novels and through your interets and purchase of his work, add to rather than subtract from his income.
I see your face
Where beauty is threatened
With violence
Roseate in the evening's
Chimerical murders.Your face is angled at me
Like cubist lines catching
Innocence at calvary:
You trap misery
With a smile.I see it at the window
Contemplating unhappy bodies
In the skyline
I see it by the river
Washing away the terror
Washed in from all
The junkyards battle-grounds slum-burials
Bleeding revolution.Your face crowds me at the mortuaries
Defying the nakedness that is prodded
Packed and re-packed into a new
Geometry dreading the old
Dreading any resemblance to the bodies
maddened in the streets
Or to the nakedness tossing serenely
On a bed heaving heat.Your face smiles at me
When at first rung of chaos
Soldiers carry out a dying wish
Showering bullets into bodies bound
For ever with our hunger
Smashing our essences
Understanding thunder
Jerking wildly on the red sheets
With us watching crescendos spraying
Death-wash into
Our direst wonders.I see your face
Seeing us mashed into lying
Pounded into hopelessness
Praised into submission
Starved into Inhumanity
Cracked-down into circles
Where we laugh surprised
At our empty affirmations.I see your face
As I ask kissing the razor's edge
What can we do
In this fear-chamber of our lives?
What can we do
When the lights blink back the darkness
Which seems to stay for ever?
What can we do
When the roads open out the deaths
We will confront at another turning?
What can we do
When the eyes of authority
Spatter blood on the children?
When the cold grey of the evenings
Brings in all the smells
Bearing the deaths
Of so many
Whose lives seemed septic
Who were born saying yes and died
Trying
Trying to find an alternative?
What can we do
When we see the clouds swollen
With the blood of our futures?
What can we say
When poets lie
When politicians never
Tell the secret truths
That sell us
At the world's marketplace?
What can we say
When we know we should
Be doing something
About living our lives in brutal cycles?
The logic belongs to someone else
There is no music here
We have been dancing
On the burning logs
The razor's teeth
The meat of our days
There is no music here.And when I see your face
See it cry
See it weep the blood we know is ours
See it twitch and grin out our deepest hours
See it transform its beauty
Shocked by the flowering of bodies
Putrescent in our lives
When I see it
I see so many faces in one-
Break this sacrament this heart this fire
Share this body back to its original multitude as we scream into the fumes of the air:There is no music here
When we are shot there is only an
Illusion of music
Which the frenzy itself transmits
This is no way to live
When we can die
Holding our bodies by the invisible levers
And fight these temples that plague
Our bones:There are no flowers here
We squashed them on other days
As we spun the confusion of our ways
And we must come back
To where the earth is smouldering
To where the smells curl on themselves
To where the flesh is raw at every street-corner
To where the mind is seared by the smell of dawn
To where the spirit tramps the million crevices of fear
To where this old animal stalks starving
To where this old flesh breathes death
To where it is hardest to begin
Where we must scream clarity on chaos
Scream simple terror on complacency
Scream blood on blood Water on water
The pigs drowned yesterday
The prophet went with them
The sea now possesses us.And do I see your face
Watching this new design
Lifting on each wind?
I know that
When we have been deposited
In this cauldron
Which widens in the smithy's firein the electric tremors
when the dawns have becometoo much
And widened to each point in our battlegrounds
To each
To each
To each
I know
There will be faces
With yours and mine.Ife, 1982.
Little girl
In the green river
I watch you
Bathing away the last
Smiles of initiation
With ripples of the water's cruelty
Catching
The wondrous light
From the sky.Little girl
In the savage river
I marvel that you float
In silvery state
Amongst the riverweed
And fishes:
I marvel more
At seeing you smiling across
To the boatman
Whirling in the currents
Who drowned while sleeping
Who dreamed of the source
And of you.I see the gashes on your face
The marks you can't explain
Or wonder at
For the river gives off no reflections;
The fever in your eyes
Calls me
From my watchpost
In this time of drought;
I descend
And find the waves
Are raging
A new fear, a terrible understanding.The fishes have all gone
The weeds have gathered themselves away
I see you startled
At the stillness that comes
When the animals plunge
Into the river
To remain with you:
And I understand your terror.Little girl
In the flowering river
You have found
An alcove in the whirlpool:
It seemed such a neutral place
For your last rites
Before the howls in the air
Discover your secrets.And now that it is all over
And the animals bulk the shoreline
And the pillows of the riverbed
Whisper a great unease
And the river has reversed its current
And now that you can float
To all the cities
Under the darkening sky
There is one thing I have to tell you:On my way back up
The watchpost had been destroyed
And a crumbling new tower erected.There was a feast of madmen
And many tongues sang of abundant chaos
In the orgies
While there has been
So much water
From your eyes
In the river.
They say
Love grows
When the fear of death
Looms.They say
Courage looms
When the fear
Of never loving again
Disappears
In the smell of the enemy
Who crushes us so much
We can only fight.Love and courage grow together
When the flesh is rawest
And the spirit charged
And distorted within the nightmare
We see the possibility
Of a future.
We are the miracles that God made
To taste the bitter fruit of Time.
We are precious.
And one day our suffering
Will turn into the wonders of the earth.There are things that burn me now
Which turn golden when I am happy.
Do you see the mystery of our pain?
That we bear the poverty
And are able to sing and dream sweet things.And that we never curse the air when it is warm
Or the fruit when it tastes so good
Or the lights that bounce gently on the waters?
We bless the things even in our pain.
We bless them in silence.That is why our music is so sweet.
It makes the air remember.
There are secret miracles at work
That only Time will bring forth.
I too have heard the dead singing.And they tell me that
This life is good
They tell me to live it gently
With fire, and always with hope.
There is wonder hereAnd there is surprise
In everything the unseen moves.
The ocean is full of songs.
The sky is not an enemy.
Destiny is our friend.February 1990
After the wind lifts the beggar
From his bed of trash
And blows to the empty pubs
At the road's end
There exists only the silence
Of the world before dawn
And the solitude of trees.Handel on the set mysteriously
Recalls to me the long
Hot nights of childhood spent
In malarial slums
In the midst of potent shrines
At the edge of great seas.
Dreams of the past sing
With voices of the future.And now the world is assaulted
With a sweetness it doesn't deserve
Flowers sing with the voices of absent bees
The air swells with the vibrant
Solitude of trees who nightly
Whisper of re-invading the world.But the night bends the trees
Into my dreams
And the stars fall with their fruits
Into my lonely world-burnt hands.
And if you should leave me
I would say that the ghost
Of Cassandra
Has passed through
My eyes
I would say that the stars
In their malice
Merely light up the sky
To stretch my torment
And that the waves crash
On the shores
To bring salt-stings on
My face:
For you re-connect me with
All the lights of the sky
And the salt of the waves
And the myths in the air.
And with your passing
The evening would become too dark To dream in
And the morning Too bright.March 1986
It was a day of fairs
Yellow music on the wind, feathers
Of dead birds whirling beyond
The green trees.We walked up into the Heath
Passed a man riding a baby's bicycle
And the paths confused us.
It had rained; the earth was soggy
Beneath the deceptive grass.
We strayed past trees that bore
The features of dying men.All around us the trees were heaving.
Their comrades had fallen
The great spirits trapped in their monstrous
Trunks sang in the cold air
Songs of white mermaids
Corrupted beyond their time.
Their comrades had fallen:
They who witnessed the sordidness
And the miracles of three hundred years
Felled in an instant of nightspace
By the karmic hurricanes
Of an unconfronted history.Like old elephants, their trunks inscrutable,
Breathing lamentations on the unforgiving earth
Into which they will not be reborn,
The trees sang to us of a darkening age
With mysteries dying
And yellow spirits in the wind.We passed their hulks
On the graveyard of the Heath
We said nothing about them
We talked about a single voice
From oppressed spaces
That could bring down thunder on corrupt lands
And about tyranny unleashing wounds on itself
That bleed through us, the innocent journeyers
Into forbidden zones of dying gods.We passed then quickly
Noting the character and psychology
Of each surviving tree-
Then, from the valley, we looked up high
And saw three kites,
One red, another of blue,
The third of gold, invisibly attached
To a black cross,
Bold against the sky.We climbed Parliament Hill
Our spirits heaving, our breaths
Quickening, the earth slipping beneath our feet.
The sky quivered with silent birds.
With our ascent we noticed a gathered crowd,
An old woman with a yellow scarf
A black man with a red beret on his bald head
Children playing with strings
A nun with frozen hands
An Irish priest wearing metal-framed glasses
An enormous bible under his arm
A wand in one hand, the string of red
Kite in the other.We approached them, holding
Fast to our invisible trail, breathing
Heavily the rarefied air:
And when we gained the hill top
The cross shivered
A strong wind, smelling of incense and radiation,
And disease and French perfume and hidden wars.
Blew over from the distant Thames.We saw all the world laid out
Before us in the air
A city perceived in a moment's enchantment
Whose history, weighed down with guilt and machines,
Laughed all around us like ghosts
Who do not believe in the existence
Of men.We saw the city and marvelled.
We dream the city better
Than it dreams itself.
The air and distance weave such burning
Miracles from the houses and church spires
The towers and glass offices of multinationals.
We dream the housing estates, built on marshes;
The woods, sad and defiant;
The disorder of buildings, the threaded streets,
Where madmen wander alone,
Where men dream of impossible women,
And women of non-existent men,
With each pursuing instant fulfillment
Love without responsibility
Miracles without pain
Transformation without humility
Joy without despair
Power without vulnerability
Fame without chaos
A new life without a new death
Difficult dreams, doomed to abortions
And sick births
Blind births, one-eye births.
In the phantasm of the city
Glacial vision prevails
While voices from the marshes vainly cry out
That they are the victims and hostages
Of the history their parents accepted
In silence.The world lay before us
And the wind stayed still.
We wandered round the Irish priest
Not daring to approach
How would we be received?
And then a bitter wind blew the kites
And one got stuck, blue on green, against
The branches of a fallen tree-
We wandered round the crowd
And gazed at the cross
Upon which was written, on that wintry day,
Summery with the blessedness of its naming-
For it was Easter Sunday-
The words, clear as glass:Christ had died
Christ is risenChrist will come again-
And our spirits soared, mixing with the clouds
Of deep colour-
A child's cry of delight
Sent the golden kite upwards.
The priest's cassock lifted and was whipped
By the winds of four directions.
Voices became sweet on the air.
In the distance below, the three lakes
Shimmered- the wind carved its many names
On the face of the waters.We went down and dwelled
In the solitude of swans.
We talked of painting, love and adventures.
My friend's face was reddened by her red coat.
We heard the fair and followed the jangling music
Through the wet trails
And came upon cacophony.
We dwelled in the fair, listened to the conflicting
Noises, watched the faces of ticket sellers,
And the machines like windmills sending
The children into the air
Of artificial simulation
And the gadgets and games and bumper cars
That once filled our adolescence with longing
But which left us hungry and empty now.We left the fair followed by the smell
Of mass-cooked sausages, by dogs
Dragging hamburgers between their teeth-
We left the day behind us, with the view
From Parliament Hill
Forever bright in our vision.
We went back to our lives of ordinary miracles
With the joy of that day lost in us
Till three days later when she returned
From a long walk-
She didn't look sad, or disappointed:
But in that tone of voice we reserve
For events that should be underlined
Except we don't know why
Or how, or with what accentuation
To underline them
Make them speak
Make them significant-
And with a disturbed, imperceptible tossing
Of her head
A movement of her shoulders
A hand launching itself into the air
But holding back
She said, simply, without mystery:'The cross - that cross - is gone.'
April 1988