Day: September 11, 2012

Posted in Poetry

For the Sun Child

Posted on by Noel Ihebuzor

By Noel Ihebuzor

 

Inert the child lies,

bathed in blood,

still and silent,

 

the silence of the ward

broken by the mother’s aching sobs

exhausted,

 

long labour had drained her,

almost turning her blood blue,

till eventually the blade

 brought relief and pain,

 

baby was curled, drained

 cord twisted and twined

around a narrow neck,

life slowly choked by the connection

that had linked them

and nourished,

 

the emptying evening drags

as she sits and sobs

imagining how this life

she had known in kicks and movements

would have looked

had the cord that nourished

not also extinguished

pondering this mystery of failed procreation

where lives are twined forever,

scars remain after departures,

 

sadness slowly strangling her soul,

like a cord, the pains of an empty womb

 now more acute

as her soul bleeds

above and below the lines of suture.

 

****For the SunChild who lost her baby, and who felt that the sun had gone out! Be strong, Tashie, Ndo!

 

Posted in Poetry

Crying wants

Posted on by Noel Ihebuzor

By Noel Ihebuzor

 

Weeds of woes grow

 as wants groan and drone,

flourish when frail shallow deeds

 dance and dither puny,

piddle and idle, while

needling needs over-hang heavy,

in a darkling sad sky,

 

hunger hovers,

rages and glowers,

as hollow bellies rumble,

howling; needs shout

harsh, hoarse

hard to hide

 

begging vision with action

 to unbind the bound,

not flash bulb shallow flourish,

done to impress,

impotent sterile whimper

dripping like dribble,

trickling away

like treacle stored

in a beautiful raffia bag

Posted in Prose

Idle rambles – echoes from the past, voices of the present, whispers from the future

Posted on by Noel Ihebuzor

By Noel Ihebuzor

I hear echoes of my future playing in the present on scripts lip read by this me hewn from a crusty past that now reaches forward to embrace me smiling on a surprised morning

The me I see you see now is not me but visions of me mingled with snippets of your retina, aching stories heard on a tympanum tremulous, this me singing, in another voice, another’s voice, this me that you hear hears you echoing dimly lofty notes of me, singing of roads I walk on dew drunk dreams, nudging sluggish limbs to where I began, to where I want to go to unearth the buried umbilical cord that ties me, my present, my past and my future. And the vision is misty and my voice mushy.

I hear and feel the turning of time. I feel I sense myself also turning in that fine running sand of time, finding my present and rediscovering my past, reliving it and becoming, reaching out to embrace a future that runs from me, slightly ahead even as the distances narrow.

I see the familiar smiles of the new and reach out to feel and wrest it whilst still trying to anchor to the present I know and think I own. I am aware of  the changed yet unchanging times, the turning times, time returning and reappearing, the changing of the seasons, the trees that weep and mourn, the trees that announce new beginnings as green leaves sprout, unfurl and unfold and wave to  a smiling sun, lovely greening days, swaying in the cycling circle of time.

And I think I hear the voice that reaches from eternity to say – nothing really changes, save the way humanity looks at unchanging times, and me saying – “even knowing that change in a unchanging change is good enough for me”.