For He was a Shrub among the Poplars by Christopher Okigbo

For He was a Shrub among the Poplars

For he was a shrub among the poplars
Needing more roots
More sap to grow to sunlight
Thirsting for sunlight
A low growth among the forest.
Into the soul
The selves extended their branches
Into the moments of each living hour
Feeling for audience
Straining thin among the echoes;
And out for the solitude
Voice and soul with selves unite
Riding the echoes
Horsemen of the apocalypse
And crowned with one self
The name displays its foliage,
Hanging low
A green cloud above the forest.

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.