Newcomer III by Christopher Okigbo

Newcomer iii
(for Goergette)

In the chill breath
of the day's waking
comes the newcomer
when the draper of May
has sold out fine green
garments, and the hillsides
have made up their faces
and the gardens
on their faces
a painted smile:
such synthetic welcome
at the cock's third siren
when from behind bulrushes
waking
in the teeth of the chill Maymorn
comes the newcomer.

Christopher Okigbo

Christopher Ifekandu Okigbo was born in 1930. He was a Nigerian poet and he is today widely acknowledged as the outstanding postcolonial English - language African poet and one of the major modernist writers of the twentieth century. He died in 1967 while fighting for the independence of Biafra.