Delta
Delta of Clark’s songs
Delta of his nostalgia
Delta of his childhood
Delta of birds’ songs at dawn
It is the sweet throated songs of Clark
By the rivers of water
The home of Olokun
That calls my infantile mind to the Delta
Delta of a thousand rivers
Delta of the floating seas
And the woven words of the poet
Float as tide through weeds of the sea
Through the whole land and the world
And I knew of Delta of many waters
From the throat of the poet
Now Olokun has deserted
Her watery enclave
As giant trawlers barb her
Hairs with turbulent blades
Deep in the sacred heart of the sea
Earthworms of iron have burrowed
Their mandibles into the ocean bed
And their anuses of steel belch into
The murky sky gloomy waste
And on the land, iron rats burrow
Their ways into the heart of the earth
Munching at the cords that bind earth to earth
Guzzling rats with claws of steel
Breaking the breast of the earth
Carting away milk from mounds of life
This calls for threnody as the land
Once overflowing with the songs of birds
Overlapping with the hum of bees
Cascading with the rhythms of rivers
Now a churchyard of abandoned dreams
Now a metaphor of broken hope
Now a theatre of raging war
Now an enclave of desolation and starvation
Men and women go about with vacant eyes
Stripped of their land and the milk flowing
In its pregnant anatomy
Stripped of the sun and even of moonlight at dusk
Rivers flowing with faces; black-oiled faces
Faces torn and shredded by maggots from rotten oil
And everywhere, naked trees stand
Their clothing devoured by unseen milky flames
Amidst all these, a tube cut through the earth
Sea, streams, and erstwhile forest lands
In the tube, honey flowed into distant pockets!
Dec. 2016
Meet The Poet:
Akwu Sunday Victor holds a degree in English and Literary Studies and is presently a post graduate student at Kogi State University, Anyigba.
