Free Collected Poems by Chinua Achebe Page B

faith?
    Then I saw it
    Poised in courageous impartiality
    Between the primordial quarrel of Earth
    And Sky striving bravely to sink roots
    Into objectivity midair in stone.
    I thought the rain, prime mover
    To this enterprise, someday would rise in power
    And deliver its ward in delirious waterfall
    Toward earth below. But every rainy day
    Little playful floods assembled on the slab,
    Danced, parted round its feet,
    United again, and passed.
    It went from purple to sickly green
    Before it died.
    Today I see it still—
    Dry, wire-thin in sun and dust of the dry months—
    Headstone on tiny debris of passionate courage.
    Aba, 1968
Pine Tree in Spring
(for Leon Damas)
    Pine tree
    flag bearer
    of green memory
    across the breach of a desolate hour
    Loyal tree
    that stood guard
    alone in austere emeraldry
    over Nature's recumbent standard
    Pine tree
    lost now in the shade
    of traitors decked out flamboyantly
    marching back unabashed to the colors they betrayed
    Fine tree
    erect and trustworthy
    what school can teach me
    your silent, stubborn fidelity?
The Explorer
    Like a dawn unheralded at midnight
    it opened abruptly before me—a rough
    circular clearing, high cliffs of deep
    forest guarding it in amber-tinted spell
    A long journey's end it was though how
    long and from where seemed unclear,
    unimportant; one fact alone mattered
    now—that body so well preserved
    which on seeing I knew had brought me there
    The circumstance of death
    was vague but a floating hint
    pointed to a disaster in the air
    elusively
    But where, if so, the litter
    of violent wreckage? That rough-edged
    gypsum trough bearing it like a dead
    chrysalis reposing till now in full
    encapsulation was broken by a cool
    hand for this lying in state. All else
    was in order except the leg missing
    neatly at knee joint
    even the white schoolboy dress
    immaculate in the thin
    yellow light; the face in particular
    was perfect having caught nor fear
    nor agony at the fatal moment.
    Clear-sighted with a clarity
    rarely encountered in dreams
    my Explorer-Self stood a little
    distant but somewhat fulfilled; behind
    him a long misty quest: unanswered
    questions put to sleep needing
    no longer to be raised. Enough
    in that trapped silence of a freak
    dawn to come face-to-face suddenly
    with a body I didn't even know
    I lost.
Agostinho Neto
    Neto, were you no more
    Than the middle one favored by fortune
    In children's riddle; Kwame
    Striding ahead to accost
    Demons; behind you a laggard third
    As yet unnamed, of twisted fingers?
    No! Your secure strides
    Were hard earned. Your feet
    Learned their fierce balance
    In violent slopes of humiliation;
    Your delicate hands, patiently
    Groomed for finest incisions,
    Were commandeered brusquely to kill,
    Your melodious voice to battle cry.
    Perhaps your family and friends
    Knew a merry flash cracking the gloom
    We see in pictures but I prefer
    And will keep the darker legend.
    For I have seen how
    Half a millennium of alien rape
    And murder can stamp a smile
    On the vacant face of the fool,
    The sinister grin of Africa's idiot-kings
    Who oversee in obscene palaces of gold
    The butchery of their own people.
    Neto, I sing your passing, I,
    Timid requisitioner of your vast
    Armory's most congenial supply.
    What shall I sing? A dirge answering
    The gloom? No, I will sing tearful songs
    Of joy; I will celebrate
    The Man who rode a trinity
    Of awesome fates to the cause
    Of our trampled race!
    Thou Healer, Soldier, and Poet!

Poems About War
The First Shot
    That lone rifle-shot anonymous
    in the dark striding chest-high
    through a nervous suburb at the break
    of our season of thunders will yet
    steep its flight and lodge
    more firmly than the greater noises
    ahead in the forehead of memory.
A Mother in a Refugee Camp
    No Madonna and Child could touch
    Her tenderness for a son
    She soon would have to forget….
    The air was heavy with odors of diarrhea,
    Of unwashed children with washed-out ribs
    And dried-up bottoms waddling in labored