FAMINE

Famine came like a warrior
And Plenitude fled
The sun rained on the world
With His arrowlike rays.
The ground was furnace to the touch
Rivers shrank like the feelers of the snail
Trees stretched leprous branches
In the dusty gale
And men rushed into Death’s salvaging hands

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NOCTURNAL RITES

Author’s quote: ” poetry is the motion of the mind.
I am poetry and what I write is but a translation!”

The night sweats with mysterious calls
Waves of drumbeats stab the coven’s lair

The night is blind in its luminous eye
Owls and vultures perch on surrounding trees

Dead to the stern reproach of day
You dance to your grisly beats.

Dark sepulchral voices
Chant incantations and spells

You drink portions of blood
Blood from my veins

Your pots boil with the heat of my life
Your faces shine with the sweat from my brow

Must I sleep smothered in your deadly arms
Must I grieve for days on end?

Hidden in the darkest depth of the dark, do wait
Daylight comes!

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THE RAIN

The sun ripened in the sky
Plucked by unseen hands
Blind clouds groped through
The Wind picked up her broom
And swept neatly through the sand
The Trees argued fiercely
Gesticulating and turning
The skies were hurrying about for a shelter
And from the distance
Between thundering
A spray of cold rain came
Hammering on the iron sheets!

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THE WIND

The Wind opened our door
And rudely came in
He did not knock on the door
To tell the person within

He ran round the room
And threw things on the floor
He swept like a broom
And fled with my effects and more

The Wind you’re a thief
Do not come in again
Even as the clouds shift
And it is trying to rain

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HOPE AND DESIRE

You stand there dressed in your beautiful robes
Gentle as the breeze
Golden as the sun
You stand there angel of the dawn
How will I get to you?

How will I get to you
When the path lay strewn with thorns
And the sun, a deep black hood,
Has made night of a sunny day
Pearl of the dawn

The day has died
Buried by the night
The fire by the hearth
Has stretched out in sleep
But i am still here waiting
Waiting just to have you in my arms!

Pearl of the dawn
Your beauty has ravished me
But it is as if I shall forever be on this steppe
waiting and waiting
Just to have you in my arms!

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THE AGELESS CHILD

A child unborn
Several years since
The child unborn
Grew beard in my womb!

Good child you are
Wonder of the wound
Only beard to tell the age
Yet giant of the womb.

The darkness here
Blinds eagle-eye
Fertile womb-soil
Sprouts ageless growth

Good child of the womb
builds ebullient castles
undeterred by the darkness
In the unreality of the womb!

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INCANTATIONS

To him who has kept us this way
Where PEACE sits like a stranger in our midst
Where darkness fights the day
Darkness of a million nights
Darkness so thick the thumb could feel.

To him who has lured us this far
With false promises of better days to come
And sapped us in the act
Turned our life in and out.

I, the hand of history,
I call thunder and lightning to witness
Oh you vengeful spirits, I conjure you up!

Tell him he has stepped on a dangerous scorpion
He has touched the lion by the tail
And laid himself open to the venomous fangs
Of the sleeping python.

On the day of judgement,
I, history, shall seize him by the legs
i’ll hang him in the skies
I’ll bury him in my wrath!
He shall die five times and again
No one shall mourn him save
Vultures and owls who shall
Make feast by his deserted tomb.
The day which now frowns
Shall sing with birds
Men shall shine like the stars
In ecstasy over his demise!

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Poems (c) Clarius Ugwuoha