‘Monologue Written After Watching a Robin Lift from a Tree Branch’

Summary

A legend goes that a man is first a man.

And then the legend questions itself.

I want to know yesterday and its cognates,

But what actually is tumbling in my thought is the image of whirling

Spittle in the mouths of two adults kissing in a public toilet.

Sometimes my thoughts deny me the freedom of hearing my arraignments.

And every time I walk onto a pond, I take it to not mean someone's tears.

It's another day today and I have taken an axe and dismantling my boundaries;

Let the morning birds, bearing with them

Mozart's pears and Igbo waffles, wet crystals and twigs,

Fly into my body and fill in the spaces where I lack.

I lack in excitement. In openness. And in finding.

In gardens. In roses. And in metaphors.

I lack in my country. Lack. Lack. Lack.

And I have staged my country many times before

Men and women, before my past and present,

Wanting to know if I did any wrong living in it,

If I did any wrong tendering my mistakes and verity in it.

I carry wishes I have for my country with two hands God gave me

And with care so they don't fall apart, so they don't

Someday turn to pines riddling my back and its cord.

I understand that sometimes we cannot defeat our supplications.

And my friend who loves playing chess often tells me that

At the end of a tunnel we sometimes find a leopard's claw

Or, in all probability, we find a train coming upon us.

But I don't want to believe it. But I don't want to believe it.

It's another day today and I am wondering about its arms and legs.

I AM ON A ROAD AND MY MOUTH IS FULL OF QUESTIONS

about the ways in which we have become so full of paralytic

appendages, so full of shortcomings, hunger and silences.

I am always with questions because there's something

in what doesn't need to be forgotten; I mean we

sometimes see a man and our voice becomes his voice.

In the morning, I arrange my conscience into justice.

I believe in justice because I understand.

And because I believe in justice and understand, I often want

to compare my days to that night before Christ's crucifixion.