To a Never Receding Echo
ODE TO A NEVER RECEDING ECHO
For Onyebuchi
Day and night in an eternal combat.
A truce : the eternal cycle of night and light
Lost in the ruse of an eclipse.
Where is the truce in the ruse of going and coming?
You found yours swinging on that threshold,
Where udara tree dances to the choirs of the wind.
Then you bend to itch the scratch.
The debt of birth repaid too soon.
Where lion wimp and head dancer limp!
Crippled Aligo!!!
Have you journeyed through the chart on your palm ?
After a drunken sip of prerian spring.
Soured tryst with Sophia.
Cherubim through the umbilical returns
To the progenitor?not conceived! Unborn!!
Halo on rusty hair sits.
Or was it your iyiuwa. Unburnt
Pleat, unpleat then pleat…
Under the star-apple tree,
Where all roads meet
Do not live on the threshold
Stay with me, ignore the whispers of these shadows
Itching your feathered cap.
You have sucked through this nipple time dry
Leave her, now flaccid, bosom. see she shrieks.
Head of the Baptist shrieks
Superfluous gift for many half Christs,
Too proud for Baptism.
I wonder why?
A pine piercing the sun
Withers at the descent of a dozen, score moon.
Eleodimmuo it is you I am calling.
You, eternity lost in time.
A dance to a never receding echo
If now is dusk, I hope the echo stays
At least,for me, a pedagogic star.
While the magi?me, beside the manger wait
For the birth of light.
While owl hoots dove’s lullaby;
Vulture hatching in eagle’s nest.
You are my Ogbanje, my forerunner
Even if the lips of days hums dirge as they pass
Now, Soldier ant from the udara returns. again.
Matching, invading my tryst, feasting on a depleted layer.
Futile to chase; deliberate in pace
Need I learn this tune?if it never rest?
Fallowed stream bites as dreams cradle me.
The black thing chants Ogbanje, Ogbanje and I sign
At this never receding echo.
In memory of Onyebuchi
If you in dancing to, faults, my beat. see a fore admission of a mortal's fallibility
Uraoma Nwannem
© Chikwado Nwattah . 2014
Copyright © Chikwado Nwattah | Year Posted 2014
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