A Dance Unspent

Say there was a dance unspent in you,

a certain aversion to twine in the soul-shifting plunge

into the  spell of the transformative pond;

or say  a refusal to arouse

with the singular, profane tension of that plunge

and grab Hermes by the mane, wresting

and heaving the techne   and the fire

that followed,  into a limber engagement

with life and love…

say the fire itself had turned cold,

ashen,  in the nor’easter of rumoured

redaction of  other’s narratives,

and you let such impurity rend

your soul from  its flame or break the playful ecstasies

in your eyes…

say  all such  insubstances of a stitching

humanism were gone before you reinvented

your own existence in  this inexactitude,

then this poem would’ve ended  unwritten,

lost in the darkness of an inscrutable sorrow,

alien sphere with no memory to  recall your cadences

or the brittle grace that set you free.

____________

Peter Akinlabi writes from Ilorin, Nigeria