Lament of the Flutes by Christopher Okigbo

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 off…

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 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.