Description: Prologue 1966 absentminded our thoughtless days sat at dire controls and played indolently slowly downward in remote subterranean shaft a diamond-tipped drill point crept closer to residual chaos to rare artesian hatred that once squirted warm blood in God''s face confirming His first disappointment in Eden Nsukka, November 19, 1971 Benin Road Speed is violence Power is violence Weight violence The butterfly seeks safety in lightness In weightless, undulating flight But at a crossroads where mottled light From old trees falls on a brash new highway Our separate errands collide I come power-packed for two And the gentle butterfly offers Itself in bright yellow sacrifice Upon my hard silicon shield. Mango Seedling Through glass windowpane Up a modern office block I saw, two floors below, on wide-jutting concrete canopy a mango seedling newly sprouted Purple, two-leafed, standing on its burst Black yolk. It waved brightly to sun and wind Between rains-daily regaling itself On seed yams, prodigally. For how long? How long the happy waving From precipice of rainswept sarcophagus? How long the feast on remnant flour At pot bottom? Perhaps like the widow Of infinite faith it stood in wait For the holy man of the forest, shaggy-haired Powered for eternal replenishment. Or else it hoped for Old Tortoise''s miraculous feast On one ever recurring dot of cocoyam Set in a large bowl of green vegetables- This day beyond fable, beyond faith? Then I saw it Poised in courageous impartiality Between the primordial quarrel of Earth And Sky striving bravely to sink roots Into objectivity, midair in stone. I thought the rain, prime mover To this enterprise, someday would rise in power And deliver its ward in delirious waterfall Toward earth below. But every rainy day Little playful floods assembled on the slab, Danced, parted round its feet, United again, and passed. It went from purple to sickly green Before it died. Today I see it still- Dry, wire-thin in sun and dust of the dry months- Headstone on tiny debris of passionate courage. Aba, 1968 Pine Tree in Spring (for Leon Damas) Pine tree flag bearer of green memory across the breach of a desolate hour Loyal tree that stood guard alone in austere emeraldry over Nature''s recumbent standard Pine tree lost now in the shade of traitors decked out flamboyantly marching back unabashed to the colors they betrayed Fine tree erect and trustworthy what school can teach me your silent, stubborn fidelity? The Explorer Like a dawn unheralded at midnight it opened abruptly before me-a rough circular clearing, high cliffs of deep forest guarding it in amber-tinted spell A long journey''s end it was though how long and from where seemed unclear, unimportant; one fact alone mattered now-that body so well preserved which on seeing I knew had brought me there The circumstance of death was vague but a floating hint pointed to a disaster in the air elusively But where, if so, the litter of violent wreckage? That rough-edged gypsum trough bearing it like a dead chrysalis reposing till now in full encapsulation was broken by a cool hand for this lying in state. All else was in order except the leg missing neatly at knee joint even the white schoolboy dress immaculate in the thin yellow light; the face in particular was perfect having caught nor fear nor agony at the fatal moment. Clear-sighted with a clarity rarely encountered in dreams my Explorer-Self stood a little distant but somewhat fulfilled; behind him a long misty quest: unanswered questions put to sleep needing no longer to be raised. Enough in that trapped silence of a freak dawn to come face-to-face suddenly with a body I didn''t even know I lost. Agostinho Neto Neto, were you no more Than the middle one favored by fortune In children''s riddle; Kwame Striding ahead to accost Demons; behind you a laggard third As yet unnamed, of twisted fingers? No! Your secure strides Were hard earned. Your feet Learned their fierce balance In violent slopes of humiliation; Your delicate hands, patiently Groomed for finest incisions, Were commandeered brusquely to kill, Your melodious voice to battle cry. Perhaps your family and friends Knew a merry flash cracking the gloom We see in pictures but I prefer And will keep the darker legend. For I have seen how Half a millennium of alien rape And murder can stamp a smile On the vacant face of the fool, The sinister grin of Africa''s idiot-kings Who oversee in obscene palaces of gold The butchery of their own people. Neto, I sing your passing, I, Timid requisitioner of your vast Armory''s most congenial supply. What shall I sing? A dirge answering The gloom? No, I will sing tearful songs Of joy; I will celebrate The Man who rode a trinity Of awesome fates to the cause Of our trampled race! Thou Healer, Soldier, and Poet! Poems About War The First Shot That lone rifle-shot anonymous in the dark striding chest-high through a nervous suburb at the break of our season of thunders will yet steep its flight and lodge more firmly than the greater noises ahead in the forehead of memory. A Mother in a Refugee Camp No Madonna and Child could touch Her tenderness for a son She soon would have to forget. . . . The air was heavy with odors of diarrhea, Of unwashed children with washed-out ribs And dried-up bottoms waddling in labored steps Behind blown-empty bellies. Other mothers there Had long ceased to care, but not this one: She held a ghost-smile between her teeth, And in her eyes the memory Of a mother''s pride. . . . She had bathed him And rubbed him down with bare palms. She took from their bundle of possessions A broken comb and combed The rust-colored hair left on his skull And then-humming in her eyes-began carefully to part it. In their former life this was perhaps A little daily act of no consequence Before his breakfast and school; now she did it Like putting flowers on a tiny grave. Christmas in Biafra (1969) This sunken-eyed moment wobbling down the rocky steepness on broken bones slowly fearfully to hideous concourse of gathering sorrows in the valley will yet become in another year a lost Christmas irretrievable in the heights its exploding inferno transmuted by cosmic distances to the peacefulness of a cool twinkling star. . . . To death-cells of that moment came faraway sounds of other men''s carols floating on crackling waves mocking us. With regret? Hope? Longing? None of these, strangely, not even despair rather distilling pure transcendental hate . . . Beyond the hospital gate the good nuns had set up a manger of palms to house a fine plastercast scene at Bethlehem. The Holy Family was central, serene, the Child Jesus plump wise-looking and rose-cheeked; one of the magi in keeping with legend a black Othello in sumptuous robes. Other figures of men and angels stood at well-appointed distances from the heart of the divine miracle and the usual cattle gazed on in holy wonde

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