Christopher Okigbo
from "Distances" 


From flesh into phantom on the horizontal stone
I was the sole witness to my homecoming...

 Serene lights on the other balcony:
redolent fountains bristling with signs-

 But what does my divine rejoicing hold?
A bowl of incense, a nest of fireflies?

 I was the sole witness to my homecoming...

 For in the inflorenscence of the white
chamber, a voice, from very far away,
chanted, and the chamber descanted, the birthday of earth,
paddled me home through some dark
labyrinth, from laughter to the dream.

 Miner into my solitude,
incarnate voice of the dream,
you will go,
with me as your chief acolyte,
again into the anti-hill...

 I was the sole witness to my homecoming... 


"Lustra IV"



The flower weeps, unbruised,
for him who was silenced
whose advent dumb-bells celebrate
in dim light with wine song:

 Messiah will come again
After the argument in heaven
Messiah will come again...

Fingers of penitence 
bring to a palm grove 
vegetable offering 
with five fingers of chalk... 


Framents out of the Deluge VI
from Limits


He stood in the midst of them all
and appeared in true form,
He found them drunken, he found none thirsty among them.

 Who would add to your statue,
Or in your village accept you?

 He fed them on seed wrapped in wonders;
They deemed it a truth-value system,
Man out of innocence,
And there was none thirsty among them.

 They cast him in mould of iron,
And asked him to do a rock-drill -
Man out of innocence -
He drilled with dumb-bells about him.

 And they took the key off
And they hid the key of...
That none may enter.

 And they took the hot spoils off the battle,
And they shared the hot spoils among them:

Estates, among them;
And they were the chosen,
mongrel breeds,
With slogan in hand, of
won divination...

 And you talk of the people:
There is none thirsty among them. 


© Legal Personal Representatives of Christopher Okigbo, Labyrinths 1971