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
[…] of our mourning words. I present to you works from Yomi Ogunsanya (Night Too Soon), Peter Akinlabi (A Dance Unspent), Ayodele Olofintuade (Tonight I Deleted Ify Omalicha), Benson Eluma (Two Poems for Omalicha), […]