Tuesday Poem Special by Niran Okewole

THE SEVENTH LESSON

The river is a python dancing

 

It pirouettes, mocking the faux Jew in gaol,

Paschal lamb of King Leer,

The old sluggish king in his lair

Railing at the choice of holy writ

While the sun also rises over purgatory –

 

Ali Ghieri’s hope of redemption rests

In the thousand bosoms of Beatrice,

The many morphs of desire, dreams

Deferred like raisins in a red sun –

 

Raisins spread out to dry on the kerb,

Flung and scattered like broken

Hosts, dry fruit crunching with gravel,

Shrivelled like the wrinkles of an old hag who’s seen

Too much, too many scars turned conquest,

Their nubile innocence honed into weapons of war –

 

Look a red sun is rising over the river,

Bearing bloodtidings as this kabbalah numerologist

Fingers his beads:

This for the number of bullets littering the streets

After carnage,

This for the number of days in solitary,

This for the numbered days of Nsibidi –

 

The waves plummet on boulders

Shored up against the ruins at full tide,

The river runs its raging course –

The goddess, they say, has claimed her victims

But there is a different dialectic:

It is the season of anomie, and the death dance

Presages thunder and gore –

 

For the river

The river is a python

The river is a python dancing