Hush me into your reverence
O stillness
from the bushes
poisoned darts with warm
black eyes are
springing against
the leaping arms
of turreted cars
the birds are singing
their hollow notes
the diamond-eyes arrow the sky
and prayers hail
the showers of pea-sized
stones
the heaving throat is parched
with fear
in the ice-cold goblet
booby-trap boots bustling
across blank bleeding heaps
of the dying and the dead
everything’s blackness
blackness everything!
Crush me into your bosom then
O stillness
while I thrash the waters of pain
for no tobacco will
as long as I live,
gurgle for long
in my ancestral sand-pipe.
T. C. Nwosu
EDITOR’S NOTE
Originally published in Nigeria Magazine on 01 Jan 1981, p. 123. This diplomatic transcription preserves the wording and lineation visible in the archived page.