Book Read Free

A Fire in My Head

Page 6

by Ben Okri


  time to ascend.

  Invocation Hour

  THE ANGLE

  poet

  sees life

  a certain way.

  nature

  angle

  relationship

  to reality.

  the master makes

  something

  out of nothing.

  no such

  thing as

  nothing.

  all things

  imbued

  with infinite

  mystery

  of origin.

  mind shapes

  the immortal

  power

  the atomic

  reality.

  BASED ON A TRANSLATION

  i wander to the house of the one i love

  where the plum tree brushes the eaves.

  dripping with blossom and with leaves

  the dew lies in the white flowers,

  lies there in the gentle hours.

  i watch sparrows from the flower-cups drink.

  singing of my love makes me think.

  how do you go to your love’s house?

  on the night-wind, with wings.

  what calls you to your lover’s house?

  everything fine that sings.

  how many roads lead to your lover’s house?

  more roads than sand.

  which is the best road to your lover’s house?

  all the roads in the land.

  DIALLO’S TESTAMENT

  Can you read the riddle of sense

  In this portrait of me begun?

  I am one on whom providence

  Has worked its magic turn.

  Behind me is a quivering story

  Like a storm, or a stain.

  As an African I have worn history

  Round my neck like a chain.

  I have sipped the language of death

  I have shaped my canvas of earth.

  I’ve crossed a sea of fires

  And seen what not even empires

  Nor great might can obscure.

  Man is the sickness, God the cure.

  THE ROHINGYAS

  the hammer of

  the army beats

  down upon them

  laws of the state

  dispossess them

  eagles that feed

  on time’s liver

  devour them whole

  and icons of justice

  abandon them

  they are scattered

  in their thousands

  across borders

  and boundaries

  and no one speaks for them

  no one weeps at the rape of them

  the laws say they cannot

  buy land in their own lands

  they’re dispossessed

  of citizenship in the place

  where they are citizens.

  they’re the image

  of powerlessness in

  our time, the image of

  vulnerability

  of the peaceful way

  in a time when

  force moves

  the world

  and a religion

  of light

  dealing

  darkness

  on the edge of the world

  where the centre

  howls in its hollowness

  a race of human beings

  are perishing.

  the world it seems

  is good at being deaf.

  the planet screams

  women are raped

  men are crushed

  and tyranny

  bursts at the seams

  of its map and great powers

  are silent. freedom’s hand

  bloody and broken

  is compromised

  by the feasting

  on hearts in the towers.

  it seems there are two worlds

  in one pipelines

  confer immunity

  tanks and guns break

  the flesh

  in the other blood

  runs fresh

  skulls are broken

  on the pavements of history.

  nations preserve

  their equanimity.

  this silence is a mystery

  can you watch a

  man being flayed

  alive in the open

  wound of the street?

  can you watch tanks

  crush human feet?

  and a religion

  of peace

  dealing

  in agony?

  this silence is a mystery.

  BREATHING THE LIGHT

  you died gently,

  without fighting

  what was murdering you.

  and maybe that’s

  why your death moved

  us so deeply. maybe

  at the end there your life

  seemed a wasted

  thing, with three jail

  terms behind you,

  as you went to

  the shop to buy

  something with a

  twenty-dollar

  counterfeit bill.

  the store owner

  called the cops on

  you, for twenty dollars.

  i dread to think

  how he must feel,

  that his call in effect

  led to your death.

  we make too big a deal

  about death.

  it comes

  and it’s over.

  it goes into the air,

  into the earth.

  it rarely changes life.

  but all through that

  last hour, as the

  police manhandled you,

  twisted your arm

  behind your back,

  forced you to the

  ground, and one of

  them, the weirdest

  of them, stuck his

  knee on your wind-

  pipe and took no

  notice as you

  whispered something

  sixteen times, the

  two other officers

  simply stood there,

  witnesses to the law

  killing the law,

  while concerned citizens

  attempt intervention,

  without power.

  you didn’t see all

  that. maybe all you saw

  were the final moments

  of your leap, when

  on the school team,

  you were going to touch

  the sky and touch

  the world; your leap

  back then, how full

  of promise, full

  of the power to help

  a team win. life

  afterwards was a long

  fall into the abyss

  of america, where

  to be black is to make

  an early pact

  with death, not your

  own death, but the death

  that’s waiting for you in

  the blackness of

  america.

  maybe you saw all that

  or remembered you at

  a friend’s wedding

  wearing a white suit, tall

  like the bridegroom of

  aphrodite, tall for

  a big destiny, that

  eluded you,

  year after year,

  in the purple

  light of the republic.

  and all those roads,

  all those failed prom-

  ises brought you

  here, with your neck

  beneath the knee

  of a policeman,

  the breath of life

  fading from you

  like the fragrance

  from the autumn roses.

  you called your breath

  sixteen times, like

  a sad lover, while two

  white women filmed

  the grim catastrophe
/>
  of injustice that bloomed

  there in lincoln’s

  graveyard, the whole

  broken earth of

  america.

  you didn’t fight

  you simply faded as

  your breath drifted

  away beneath

  the knee of justice.

  you hadn’t been charged

  you hadn’t been tried

  you hadn’t been found guilty.

  you had not been sentenced

  and yet you were

  being crushed to

  death, while

  the whole

  world watched.

  maybe it’s because you

  did not fight, did

  not struggle, because you

  knew that to resist was

  to invite death

  from the law. you

  learned not to struggle, not

  to curse, not to protest,

  not to fight back, only

  how to die like flotsam

  on a receding tide.

  it was a kind of love,

  your dying. a kind of

  gentleness. There’s

  no end to the insult

  we suffer. when

  did it really begin?

  but it was that

  way you let your

  breath go, let it

  go sixteen times,

  watching it, eyes

  slowly dimming,

  maybe it was

  your doing nothing but

  let the heart of

  america reveal

  itself that was

  the greatest way

  of speaking, the

  greater way of

  dying, that brings

  down the whole dead

  house of race, that

  died long ago

  in white power,

  in black silence,

  died but did not

  know it, because

  of all the guns,

  the law, the whole

  invisible, inviolate

  matrix of sustenance.

  but hatred dies

  slowly, dies a long time

  and maybe will never

  die truly as long as

  eyes see fear where

  heart sees flowers.

  what did i ever do

  to be hated by you?

  and so your death

  passed into the

  force of history,

  because it awakened

  the silences

  the pain

  the injustices that

  have been stored up

  for four hundred

  colourless years.

  you died into silence

  but the big world

  rose up in speech.

  there’s no poetry

  of change greater

  than when the world

  sees at last that

  it can be free

  free to breathe the light that

  keeps the republic alive.

  INVOCATION FOR THE SHRINE 4

  revelations come fast

  with harvests of spirits.

  for the world is not as it seems.

  free yourselves from the illusion of limits.

  here are the miracles unseen

  time turning the limits of the past

  into wise new freedom. redream

  chains into fires that last.

  saint time speaks from the shrine

  of the hours; speaks about the powers

  of the blacks who are free and can dream

  free to weave power from flowers.

  bring a clear dream for the world

  you who walk this way. bring your light.

  bring your wisdom, your fire, your hope.

  bring a new courage, a new fight.

  LINES TOWARDS A LOVE POEM

  a voice in the flower.

  and i am missing you.

  on the edge of anguish.

  hey, light-thrower,

  i’m throwing love your way.

  pure form

  and luminous spirit,

  beyond the body you

  distil pleasures.

  kissing you stops

  time and the mind.

  i carry you in me

  like a poem unread,

  a classic song,

  or that full moon.

  i am craving your gaze.

  just a long kiss

  without breathing.

  so be patient.

  let love and time

  do their mysterious work.

  i woke with a new clarity.

  we earn what life will give

  us, earn it with courage,

  love and wisdom.

  i’m sending you my tears

  to open your way.

  sow your talent

  reap your genius.

  GRENFELL TOWER, JUNE 2017

  It was like a burnt matchbox in the sky.

  It was black and long and burnt in the sky.

  You saw it through flowering stumps of trees.

  You saw it beyond the ochre spire of the church.

  You saw it in the tears of those who survived.

  You saw it through the rage of those who survived.

  You saw it past the posters of those who burnt to ashes.

  You saw it past the posters of those who jumped to their deaths.

  You saw it through TV images of flames through windows

  Running up the aluminium cladding

  You saw it in print images of flames bursting out from the roof.

  You heard it in voices loud in the streets.

  You heard it in cries in the air howling for justice.

  You heard it in pubs streets basements dives.

  You heard it in wailing of women and silent screams

  Of orphans wandering the streets

  You saw it in your baby who couldn’t sleep at night

  Spooked by ghosts that wander the area still trying

  To escape fires that came at them black and choking.

  You saw it in dreams of the dead who asked if living

  Has no meaning being poor in a land

  Where the poor die in flames without warning.

  But when you saw it with your eyes it seemed what the eyes

  Saw didn’t make sense can’t make sense won’t make sense.

  You saw it there in the sky, tall and black and burnt.

  You counted the windows, counted the floors

  And saw the sickly yellow of half-burnt cladding

  And what you saw could only be seen in nightmare.

  Like a warzone in a fashionable borough.

  A warzone planted here in the city.

  To see with the eyes that which one only sees

  In nightmares turns the day to night, turns the world upside down.

  Those who were living now are dead

  Those who were breathing are from the living earth fled.

  If you want to see how the poor die, come see Grenfell Tower.

  See the tower, and let a world-changing dream flower.

  Residents of the area call it the crematorium.

  It has revealed the undercurrents of our age.

  The poor who thought voting for the rich would save them.

  The poor who believed all that the papers said.

  The poor who listened with their fears.

  The poor who live in their rooms and dream for their kids.

  The poor are you and I, you in your garden of flowers,

  In your house of books, who gaze from afar

  At a destiny that draws near with another name.

  Sometimes it takes an image to wake a nation

  From its secret shame. And here it is every name

  Of someone burnt to death, on the stairs or in their room,

  Who had no idea what they died for, or how they were betrayed.

  They did not die
when they died; their deaths happened long

  Before. Happened in the minds of people who never saw

  Them. It happened in the profit margins. Happened

  In the laws. They died because money could be saved and made.

  Those who are living now are dead

  Those who were breathing are from the living earth fled.

  If you want to see how the poor die, come see Grenfell Tower

  See the tower, and let a world-changing dream flower.

  They called the tower ugly; dubbed it an eyesore.

  All around the beautiful people in their beautiful houses

  Didn’t want the ugly tower to ruin their house prices.

  Ten million was spent to encase the tower in cladding.

  Had it ever been tested before except upon this eyesore,

  Had it ever been tested for fire, been tried in a blaze?

  But it made the tower look pretty, yes it made the tower look pretty.

  But in twenty-four storeys, not a single sprinkler.

  In twenty-four storeys not a single alarm that worked.

  Twenty-four storeys not a single fire escape,

  Only a dank stairwell designed in hell, waiting

  For an inferno. That’s the story of our times.

  Make it pretty on the outside, a death trap

  On the inside. Make the hollow sound nice, make

  The empty look good. That’s all they will see,

  How it looks, how it sounds, not how it really is, unseen.

  But if you really look you can see it, if you really listen

  You can hear it. Got to look beneath the cladding.

  There’s cladding everywhere. Political cladding,

  Economic cladding, intellectual cladding – things that look good

  But have no centre, have no heart, only moral padding.

  They say the words but the words are hollow.

  They make the gestures, and the gestures are shallow.

  Their bodies come to the burnt tower, but their souls don’t follow.

  Those who were living are now dead.

  Those who were breathing are from the living earth fled.

  If you want to see how the poor die, come see Grenfell Tower.

  See the tower, and let a world-changing deed flower.

  The voices here must speak for the dead.

  Speak for the dead. Speak for the dead.

  See their pictures line the walls. Poverty is its own

  Colour, its own race. They were Muslim and Christian,

  Black and white and colours in between. They were young

  And old, beautiful and middle-aged. There were girls

  In their best dresses, hearts open to the future.

  There was an old man with his grandchildren;

  There was Kadija, a young artist,

  There was Amaya Tuccu, three years old,

  Burnt to ashes before she could see the lies of the world.

  There are names who were living beings who dreamt

  Of fame or contentment, education or love

  Who are now ashes in a burnt-out shell of cynicism.

 

‹ Prev