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poetry
FIRST PRIZE WINNER - SENTINEL LITERARY
QUARTERLY
POETRY COMPETITION (OCTOBER 2009)
Moving
Kumasi, 1967
by
AKINLABI PETER
1
i would not know you
if not for the lights
riding forth through
the retaining walls
of the ungovernable
river…
we had forded water
to the rail lines
reciting the
lapidary psalms of the baptists
but arrived home to
a startled flight of voices
a frightful moment
later,
lights of devotion
falling again
through the ashen
pulse of the wind, i dog-eared
the intimation on
the dark bulrushes of Kumasi
and that is how i
was ferried home
incomplete,
cultivating another time
while the dissonant
meaning lets in
a daunting disbelief
a child again,
i fold a geography of loss
into your eyes of
secret, into the grieving fondness
of that district
that women called Lagostown
2
so you will go
through to Kumasi again
you will remember
how the days passed
between the terraces
and the grotto
you will recall the
seduction of a quiet surrender
maybe you will
remember too
a child’s
unfettered heart; an atrocious gift
wrapped in the
riddle of a sunset; arms outstretched
unto the sky of an
abandoned house
ah, the sudden
dampness of departure
now you perfect your
gift of double faith-
hope it still
retains its reins of cool closures-
admitting your
weightless, interminable narrative
a bridge, you say,
to a transmissible life
when you arrive in
Kumasi,
you might cleanse
the memory of sun dusts
searching the
direction of clouds towards Ababu
or you might come
undone
reading the signs of
recent dawns on a tall building
the river will be
unfamiliar- if you find it-
but the lights will
still be the same
playing the meanings
with things in memory
you can look for the
fey swell of the bulrushes
and count the
degrees of pain in the architecture of loss
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