Fragments Out Of The Deluge VI: He Stood In The Midst Of Them All by Christopher Okigbo

HE STOOD in the midst of them all

and appeared in true form,

He found them drunken, he found none

thirsty among them.

Who would add to your statue,

Or in your village accept you?

He fed them on seed wrapped in wonders,

And deemed it a truth-value system,

Man out of innocence,

And there was none thirsty among them.

Dots and brackets,

The model is not far off …

They cast him in mould of iron,

And asked him to do a rock-drill:

Man out of innocence-

He drilled with dumb bells about him.

And they took the key off

And they hid the key of …

that none may enter.

And they took the hot spoils off the battle,

And they shared the hot spoils among them:

Estates among them;

And they were the chosen

mongrel breeds,

With slogan in hand, of

won divination …

And you talk of the people,

And there is none thirsty among them.

Christopher Okigbo

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