Lament of the Flutes
TIDEWASH... Memories
fold-over-fold free-furrow
mingling old tunes with new.
Tidewash.....Ride me
memories, astride on firm
saddle, wreathed with white
lillies & roses of blood.....
Sing to the rustic flute:
Sing a new note...
Where are the Maytime flowers,
where the roses? What will the
Watermaid bring at sundown,
a garland? A handful of tears?
Sing to the rustic flute:
Sing a new note...
Comes Dawn
gasping thro worn lungs,
Day breathes,
panting like torn horse -
We follow the wind to the fields
Bruising grass leafblade and corn...
Sundown: I draw in my egg head.
Night falls
smearing sore bruises with Sloan's
boring new holes in old sheets -
We hear them, the talkative pines,
And nightbirds and woodnymphs afar of ...
Shall I answer their call,
creep on my underself
out of my snug hole, out of my shell
to the rocks and the fringe for cleansing?
Shall I offer to Idoto
my sandhouse and bones,
then write no more snow-patch?
Sing to the rustic flute.
Sing a new note.
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.
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