Flying at night south over Africa,
small rural fires dot the void,
slowly linking up,
until they burn as great, electric freeways.
Out of darkness came the light,
demanding a great sacrifice
for the illuminating service it bestowed,
upon a people too subtle and fair-minded
to be recognized as civilized.
As ancient tablets fall to dust when discovered,
so truth only fleetingly shows itself,
before it crumbles away
and is remembered but partially
in stories falsely made fact.
Know now, that this righteous light
cast shadows darker than the primordial night,
shadows where reason could go to work, undisturbed,
exterminating millions.
For darkness is only this: truth unrevealed.
Observation
See how the birds all sit,
facing the wind the same,
on wires, roofs, great tit, blue tit,
see how the birds all sit.
They may be free, but never think on it
and with the steeple cock align their frame;
when the wind is strong see how the owlets sit,
facing the wind the same.
Sonnet to the unsaid
To say three simple mere words, I love you,
It seems is far too much for most to say;
To heave that hesitant phrase to where it’s due
What is it they feel they must give away?
Such silence among young lovers is enough
To snap with doubts and wild disappointment
Their clinging embrace to instant rebuff
And words unsaid clang like bells: annulment.
Still ringing speechless in their ears, they part
And wait, I love you is shocked loose from some,
Too late of course now having lost its art,
Or usually the words never come.
The way we are to our own footfalls deaf
Or how your voice has changed over many years
Recall you said those words, but in what clef?
No matter, we no longer have such fears.
And walking hand in hand appear, every
now’n’gain, to drag the other forward, gently.
I say: This is the story of Ophila.
Ophila is truly beautiful.
If you dare to run your fingertips
across the hard calluses on her feet,
you will wander over continents.
If you touch the palm of your hand
matched against the sole of her foot,
you will know that she has crossed
a great geography of languages,
on bare feet shingled as dried mud,
dried as the tongues in the country to our north.
If you dare to look closely at her knees
you will see the pinched faces of children
with long black eyelashes beseeching you.
If you press your lips to these her dark bruises,
there you will receive the great cries of famine in the land.
Her knees are grazed bare and bleed.
I told you Ophila is beautiful.
Her eyelids are swollen from vigil.
She does not sleep but sleep walks upon bedrock.
She has lain in the shadows of many roadsides.
She wears no wrinkles
only the pockmarks the gravel has left
embossed upon her face,
Ophila is beautiful.
In the early frosts,
before walking the many leagues to school
she rubbed soap into her;
If you gave her shoes, she will only lose them.
Black as alluvium,
Ophila, the beautiful.
She has walked on earthquakes
in the fossil lands of the Great Rift Valley;
tracked across the smouldering petroglyphs of the Sahara,
traversed the magnetic storms around the equator,
climbed over the jawbone of the Atlas,
and passed beneath the open volcanoes of Nyiragongo.
She has attended the pounding canon salutes
of colonial conquests and at liberation celebrations
with barefoot crowds thick on public squares
waved a million new little flags
then ground them underfoot
composing a heroic grand mosaic.
Wars have parted their bloody waters
like the sea of reeds
and closed again behind her
once she passed.
And after all this, she can still feel
even the dying breath of a mayfly.
Beautiful Ophila.
Ophila!
We hold your breath.
Incredibly, she survives
