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