You are the one, the unbeatable of all time
When motion is still and helpless
When companions are scarce and wobble
When hope seems not to motivate and sightless
You are the one, who emerges sagaciously like a brighter moon.
You are the one, coming and the crests arise
Like a rainbow crescent in the sky
Like a supple wind gentle
Singing songs of expectation
The earth pilgrim band goes
Marching to the Promised Land
Rides upon the storming Wind
Till the faithful beneath its shade.
The earth beauty fades
The sun is sinking fast
The daylight dies
The end of toil and gloom has come.
there’s a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I’m too tough for him,
I say, stay in there, I’m not going
to let anybody see
you.
there’s a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I pour whiskey on him and inhale
cigarette smoke
and the whores and the bartenders
If I were a bird,
I would also use my coarse throat to sing:
This land stricken by storms,
These rivers forever torrential with our indignation,
This wind ceaselessly blowing in rages,
And that incomparably mild dawn coming from the forest…
—Then I die,
Decomposed into the land even with my feathers.
Forsaken Knowledge
.
It was the golden age of knowledge;
It was the era of pyrite lies.
For all the feats and legends of man,
Faith marked their sullen demise.
.
Many millennia of war and conflict
Waged to determine whom was right.
Civil nations forced to heel and crumble.
The cruelty of man measured in might.
.
Victors skew
Dim vales—and shadowy floods—
And cloudy-looking woods,
Whose forms we can’t discover
For the tears that drip all over:
Huge moons there wax and wane—
Again—again—again—
Every moment of the night—
Forever changing places—
And they put out the star-light
With the breath from their pale faces.
Odududu ndufu!
Wardrum, without whose leadership there is fear on the way!
Wardrum, without whose leadership there is fear on the way!
Great spirit, Uduma Olugutu
Great spirit, Okali husband of my great mother, Aru!
Great spirit that dwells in the water at Nde-a-Awa-Ezhiema-Elechi!
Great spirit Umezurike of Ebiri-Ezhi-Akuma!
Great spirit Aqwu Obasi of Ekidi Nde Ofoali!
Great spirit Kaalu
Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more,
Men were deceivers ever;
One foot in sea, and one on shore,
To one thing constant never.
Then sigh not so,
But let them go,
And be you blith and bonny,
Converting all your sounds of woe
Into Hey nonny, nonny.
The skies they were ashen and sober;
The leaves they were crispéd and sere—
The leaves they were withering and sere;
It was night in the lonesome October
Of my most immemorial year;
It was hard by the dim lake of Auber,
In the misty mid region of Weir—
It was down by the dank tarn of Auber,
In the
One tree, another tree,
Each standing alone and erect.
The wind and air
Tell their distance apart.
But beneath the cover of earth
Their roots reach out
And at depths that cannot be seen
Twice or thrice had I loved thee,
Before I knew thy face or name;
So in a voice, so in a shapeless flame,
Angels affect us oft, and worshipped be;
Still when, to where thou wert, I came,
Some lovely glorious nothing I did see.
But since my soul, whose child love is,
Takes limbs of flesh, and else could
Elaine the fair, Elaine the loveable,
Elaine, the lily maid of Astolat,
High in her chamber up a tower to the east
Guarded the sacred shield of Lancelot;
Which first she placed where morning’s earliest ray
Might strike it, and awake her with the gleam;
Then fearing rust or soilure fashioned for it
A case of silk, and braided thereupon<br
Thank Heaven! the crisis,
The danger, is past,
And the lingering illness
Is over at last—
And the fever called “Living”
Is conquered at last.
Sadly, I know
I am shorn of my strength,
And no muscle I move
As I lie at full length—
But no matter!—I feel
I am better at length.
See the golden Leopard with the spots!
The golden cat of the cliffs!
See the Leopard with the bulging cheeks,
The golden Leopard with the wide face, I-Face-
Nothing,
The particoloured one, I-Climb-Into-A-Small-Tree
I rip off the eyebrows!
Clawer am I, dig my nail in deep,
My enemies I leave behind, saying
`This was not one leopard but ten!`
Mr
No man is an island,
Entire of itself.
Each is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thine own
Or of thine friend’s were.
Each man’s death diminishes me,
For
Poor harlot, Mary Magdalene,
Into the feast with trembling crept,
Past frowns that stabbed her with their hate
And falling at His feet she wept.
Self-righteous Simon spurned her there
And marveled that her sinful touch
Displeased Him not, but he forgave:
“Though sinning sore she love’d much.”
Brave, grateful Mary Magdalene,
When Peter all his faith had lost,
Pressed on
When the ‘arf-made recruity goes out to the East
‘E acts like a babe an’ ‘e drinks like a beast,
An’ ‘e wonders because ‘e is frequent deceased
Ere ‘e’s fit for to serve as a soldier.
Serve, serve, serve as a soldier,
Serve, serve, serve as a soldier,
Serve, serve, serve as a soldier,
So-oldier ~OF~ the Queen!
I came back home and retired to my couch
Walking on a deviant road
Which seemed exciting but weary like a long voyage
I saw one imp spiteful like an inferno
That suddenly changed into three dragons
Their eyes were frightened and anxious like lion claws
I appeased the land with three white doves
And struck the ground with my staff<br
COME unto these yellow sands,
And then take hands:
Court’sied when you have, and kiss’d,–
The wild waves whist,–
Foot it featly here and there;
And, sweet sprites, the burthen bear.
Hark, hark!
Bow, wow,
The watch-dogs bark:
Thou still unravish’d bride of quietness,
Thou foster-child of silence and slow time,
Sylvan historian, who canst thus express
A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:
What leaf-fring’d legend haunts about thy shape
Of deities or mortals, or of both,
In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?
What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?
What mad pursuit?
