Mukoli

In This Time of War

For the Palestine–Israel war 

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I look out of the window & exhale. & the trees exhale. 

& I pick up all the bodies as I do pebbles at the seashore. 
I smith my fears into a cannon ball, fire at my grief aiming 

to cleave it into harmful remembrances. I mistake the skin for clay 
while I mold a gun out of a boy’s elbow. In this time of war,  

the rain falls in droplets & the sun parches, every ache meant to  

soften hardens into a plague. In this time of war, 
the body is a bob between a bullet & a bomb, learning  

how to resist the wind. How not to pendulum into  
a wreckage. In this time of war, a zygote becomes a boy. 

A boy becomes a pool of blood. & a pool of blood flowers  

into a red rose. In the pages of my manuscript, I calcify my 
grief with every metaphor. I can almost hear a voice that  

is not a voice winding through the tip of my pen. & I repeat 
after my silence. I say [       ]. & the poem says [      ]. & this 

country did not see it coming —amour tanks & an ambush 

of soldiers. & they are pleading. & bleeding. & weeding 
anything that greens like peace. A woman weeds out her son’s 

scent from her memory. A son saints his mother in an elegy.  
& in this time of war, everything that glitters is guillotine.  

gasoline. gunpowder. graveyards. & grace, grace, grace, grace,

grace. & a woman squeezing god into her son’s mouth. In 
this time of war, the people pour their prayers into a very 

large lavatory watching it seethe, hoping that the vapour  
settles in God’s ears. In this time of war, the priest cannot tell  

God’s voice from silence. So, he faces the congregation &  

says [        ]. & they say [          ].   
& God says [        ] [           ]. 

In Biafra, 1975

after the Nigerian Civil War  

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We are dressed in wrappers & akwaoche.  
The cloud bellows & barks & bleats  

to tears. A woman, full of scars, runs out  
naked, surrenders her wounds to the rain.  

A man pounding cocoyam strikes the  
mortar as if pounding his country into  

shape. A boy — ax in hand — splits firewood  
into fire-edible pieces. In the farm,  

tubers of ji are pulled out from the earth.  
& an ete-nkwu with his rope curled around  

his waist cuts down ripe palm fruits.  
At the river, we cast our tongues into the 

water, the way a fisher casts his net. At dusk  
we pull many memories — enough for  

the entire village to dine in sorrow.  
As the moon bestowed its glory upon our  

black soil, the lanterns go off & the fire  
devouring woods into ashes are watered  

into compassion. An old man, grey- 
haired, three-legged & presbyopic clears 

his throat. His eyes, a transparent linen,  
you could see history rewinding within  

them. Behind his clenched teeth, there were  
many tongues. One stained with the  

blood of colonization. He called it  
In–gi–li–shi. At the tail of his tale, the  

women would wolf a loud howl & one  
child would drown into the eyes of another.  

& as the light of the moon oozed into  
oblivion, the villagers would sing & play  

the ogene until their hearts were like space, 
carrying too much — yet, weightless.  

In A Requiem We Read Nigeria Chapter 63 Verse I-XXII

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¹And yes, I mourn for our dead.  

           But, I wail for the earth.² 

                  ³The ground’s belly, expanding year after year. 

                            Year after year, we water the ground with our eyes, call it irrigation.⁴ 

                                  ⁵In every proximity to glory, there’s a swamp sinking our trees of green hope. 

                                           Winter’s harmattan drying up the last drop of spring on our faces.⁶ 

                                           ⁷In the Benue, drowned men chase fishes from the bottom of the water.  

                                  A fisher once casts his net, weaved in prayers, & pulls a netful of white bones.⁸ 

                             ⁹Says, the god’s are furious.  

                  Once, in seedtime, father says to plant a crop & on digging we discover blood.¹⁰ 

           ¹¹Once, I picked up a flower that had my grandfather’s scent. 

I thought he had grown into something more beautiful.¹² 

¹³Poor old man, he was planted on his brother’s gravestone as a threnody. 

       The elders say, the cycle continues.¹⁴ 

             ¹⁵Every morning, the cocks & birds are eloquent in their call for oleanders & rhododendrons. 

                   Mourning, we question the soothsayer who claims there is a blizzard in his visions.¹⁶ 

                         ¹⁷The future, white & blurry. 

                              What other language dresses the body with a garland, if not a bullet nailed to the ribs?¹⁸ 

                               ¹⁹The country’s anthem, a thick phlegm in the throat.    

                  And the pulmonologists cannot tell how much of the country we must cough out 

             To sound like a people.²⁰ 

         ²¹And yes, I ocean through this poem, a raging tide. 

Yet, I am the boat. The one who shipwrecks.²² 

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