ELEMENTAL
(For Kofi Awoonor)
This earth, my brother, is compost
In the clenched fist of the warrior-farmer,
Raindrops like spear points,
Baldwin says there’s trouble
Stretched above us, longer than the sky –
Between the throes of passion,
The quantum scrawl and the spidery squirt
Of Sanskrit before Prometheus –
I am become Death, destroyer of worlds
Error correction, embedded in every mole
Of the water of life, lush luminescence
In the golden swirl of single malt,
Triple filtered, splattering on this tombstone,
Flush and fittingly Irish.
_________
‘Níran Òkéwo̩lé is the author of Logarhythms and The Hate Artist.
