Running Poem
nestled in my heart
is an ache so strong
it stabs and soothes,
it lives and moves
in the blood like a potion
that kills and cures
for thirty years, I kept running,
running away from
from lines, verses, songs
running away from poetry
on windy winter mornings,
when I remember
the harmattan of my native land
a verse will arrive like a line of egrets in flight
teasing the eye in curves, in angles, in poses, pure and picturesque,
i’ll shut my eyes, close my heart to the coming poem
and, sometimes at noon,
in the season of rains,
when the light, grainy and translucent,
laden with the dust of pollens,
sows a fragrance so strong the nostrils flare with delight…
memories of soothing oils, of spices, of flowers, flow
unto a delta of tropical passions and a new song surges within,
a seasonal song, smelling of rain and grains and poems,
i shut down the senses, close my heart to the coming poem
then, at night, when the evening wind blows
and from the distance the sound of flutes –
sailing through silence and solitude –
seeking the company of a poem to ride through the dark
i plug my ears, close my heart to the coming poem
for thirty years,
i kept running, running away from poetry,
from lines, verses, and songs, closing my heart,
until, this midnight hour, in a clasp of clockhands,
through a burst of fireflies, a verse stabbed me in the gut,
piercing through flesh and marrow and memory
and the blood flowed in lines, in verses, in songs
running away from me…
and there, in the motion of wings in flight,
i found you, hidden in the open place where the ache lives,
the open place where the dream hides, waiting for wings…
Monkey Love
hanging from the branches of your arms
dreaming of bananas,
I long only for things prosaic
things without poetry or fire
like bread and flesh and earth
like soil and seed and water
like the body evidence of sweat,
undeodorized, fresh with odour,
neither seas nor sunsets will serve this need
I long only…
to clasp the trunk of your body
and hug you like the monkey hugs the tree
a hairy love in an embrace of leaves
3 Comments
Harry Garuba’s poetry touches my heart–it aches with the beauty of the lines, the evocative images, the words entangled into a string of literary pearls. I wish I had spent time to get to know this sensitive poet… Maybe he could have rubbed off onto me some poetic imagery..enhance my own stale empty writing… But now you have left us… But I have your words to inspire me
May I make a few corrections. First, Harry Garuba was a Professor of English and African studies at the University of Cape Town, South Africa; having been appointed an Associate Professor in 2005, he was upgraded, rather belatedly, to Professor in 2018. Second, his debut collection is Shadow and Dream and Other Poems; both keywords in the title, ‘Shadow’ and ‘Dream’, are singular. Third, this debut collection was published by Professor F. Abiola Irele’s New Horn Press, Ibadan in 1982, not 1981. And Steve Shaba’s Kraft Books, also in Ibadan, has since published Garuba’s long-awaited second volume, Animist Chants and Memorials, in 2017.
Thank you. Noted.