Mayakovsky

Peter Akinlabi

His umbilical never wound
afar from the womb of his earth:
from the rugged mountains of Bagdadi
to snowy greys of Petersburg or Moscow.

And in Brodyachaya sobaka where he
bantered metaphors in service
of the revolutionary tongue, on top
of his voice. Yet love surprised him

from within…

He had meant to heal the heart
with roses, perfumed breaths of a poem
disambiguated beyond bravura.
But he passed through his country,

a slanted rain, beating redemption myths
into a fit of conviction, tucking various clouds
in the trousers of locative paeans; an anarchy
fisted as doppelganger of a fitful epoch …

But love ambushed him like an exile of dreams;
he dragged his load through the transmissible
destiny he sought in peculiar solitudes.

Marechera

Harare is rusty; choking
on the cloying love of its chief liberator;
a dark disorder, widening out into the soul
of its truest poet…

He walks his land, renegade Pound,
pounding the heart of the botched
civilization; tapping on the nerves
of truth but not to mute

the lights of homeland’s tawdry
glory. He pokes a fist into its diseased
brain, scooping combustible matters
up onto the sunlight.

Dirt is aesthetics
if you can feel the purse of darkness;
trap the word to trap a sickness within:
yet without, the healer belongs

in the stricken tent. Demons lurk
within the bricks of your house- a brazen nook
of power, balanced on the ledge of rot…

A gauche nomad, he heaves his life
into a bag, his love unto a fight
into a flight…