Stillbirth - Memories of 1987
Within my own axis,
It did not slant
It did not drizzle.
The void shunned the grey clouds.
Lightning was rare.
Thunder turned mute.
Leaf-tops shook with the sleepiness of
Shameless drunks, casting ghoulish shades,
Causing affrays among wild species.
Rivulets rippled in hunger and in thirst,
Circling firths with methodical anger and protests.
The grass blades lost their verdancy and cringed.
Within this place,
The air was proud and still, unfeeling —
Thus blocking the nostrils of weaverbirds, so that
Their breath choked with the intensity of seasonal hate.
Our soils were burnt and frazzled.
Hoe-teeth were dull-edged, producing clangs of
Stony noise while only reflecting the rays of the
Killing sun.
Woe was upon us and upon the anus of the earth.
The corrugated roofs rattled loudly at noon,
Protesting the agony of torture, and like the air,
Sent down particles of aging thirst at night.
On the grounds of this zone
Came the trace of waste and powdered perdition.
Vultures constantly were late for repasts,
For the sandy ground was greedier.
Earth, pall of misery, exhumed Death
Among the dead, and exuded worms in the
Warmth of lost sempervirence.
Apoplexy on living matters reigned.
Consider the lives of old calabashes
Laid waste in the core of the desert;
The exhumed bones interred in prelapsarian order.
Imagine the still existence of the blacksmith’s forge,
The ground of the phoenix in her laboratory of rebirth —the
End product of its old life . . .
That was for us the twelfthmonth of horror.
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