Now he is a simple spectator
Now he is a simple spectator
An insignificant fellow in the crowd
Now he no longer applauds nor is applauded
A stranger wandering to the call of the streets.
The new trumpeters come from afar
From the chosen classes of the future
Their cries demolish the decayed walls
They melt the mud into luminous streams.
The pure are coming, the non-hypocrites,
Violators, non-participants, virgins,
Crafty fellow diners, these innocents,
And the registrars of our days.
The great blaze is coming
Amid the jets of merry water.
The final proscriptions are coming.
But now he is a simple spectator
An anonymous little fellow in the crowd
With his arms on his chest a dead man laid out
Now he no longer applauds nor is applauded.
(Always know the when and the how).
Chinua Achebe (1930- )
Vultures
In the greyness
and drizzle of one despondent
dawn unstirred by harbingers
of sunbreak a vulture
perching high on broken
bone of a dead tree
nestled close to his
mate his smooth
bashed-in head, a pebble
on a stem rooted in
a dump of gross
feathers, inclined affectionately
to hers. Yesterday they picked
the eyes of a swollen
corpse in a water-logged
trench and ate the things in its bowel. Full
gorged they chose their roost
keeping the hollowed remnant
in easy range of cold
telescopic eyes ...
Strange
indeed how love in other
ways so particular
will pick a corner
in that charnel-house
tidy it and coil up there, perhaps
even fall asleep - her face
turned to the wall!
...Thus the Commandant at Belsen
Camp going home for
the day with fumes of
human roast clinging
rebelliously to his hairy
nostrils will stop
at the wayside sweet-shop
and pick up a chocolate
for his tender offspring
waiting at home for Daddy's return ...
Praise bounteous
providence if you will
that grants even an ogre
a tiny glow-worm
tenderness encapsulated
in icy caverns of a cruel
heart or else despair
for in every germ
of that kindred love is
lodged the perpetuity
of evil.
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