Guest Blog: New Poems by Benson Eluma

CAMERA LUCIDA

Returned home from the airport, not sure

Which was heavier, hand or door handle.

Do I repair to a bar and

Steal into the room only after dark?

Your absence must have organized some reception,

Dinner, salver laden with solitude, unchewable.

The clutter created by your packing, hasty, delayed

Till the last minute—delayed the way I hold back

My excitement, containing release until

You begin to think it’s all over, and then

I remove the finger plugging the dyke

And let loose Kainji—the chaos

Of your hasty packing was having an argument

With the mania of our books, strewn

All over the room: smithereens from a god’s disgorgement,

Gidigbo of intimate entanglements, everywhere

A scrum of lovers, orgy of clothes and books and shoes.

No Void, this, no solitude;

It was Cosmos struggling into form-being

After the Big Bang.

I threw back the window curtain—fiat lux.

In the congeries of our room and my emotions,

Caught sight of your picture taken on Lovers’ Day,

Red purse in hand, Queen of the mêlée of my heart.

Originary lack, smiled the French conjurer,

As he issued the certificate of presence, sipping

From empty flute redolent with immanence.

Mischief is to separate the trace from the always-already-there.

Your picture lay on an open page of Oates’ On Boxing.

ROBIGALIA

Everything works for the lonely. Amen?

I, more pagan in my little finger than all

The hornèd devils of this underworld,

Retrieve the arrogated date and rites.

Old heart, finding godhead in what threatens ruin,

Turns to diurnal observance.

Numen you are in the paraphernalia left behind,

And I am flamen presiding

Over rust. To keep house against mildew,

I spume forth libations to the goddess of renewal,

Thankful to the careless carpenter

And the wet wood of the wardrobe,

Thankful to the nearby water body, grateful to damp.

The doors and shelves powder over, and

I strip down to scrub them pure.

Your unworn clothes get streaked and spotty,

(Look closely, make out Lake Michigan)

And I offer fabric entrails and detergent froth,

Oblation to the glorious sun. And thankful, indeed,

When I harvest from the line, to inhale

Freshness from washed clothes you didn’t wear,

Savouring absence in fragrances of being.

I read in the Britannica: ‘Fungi are essential

To any household; they yeast bread and beer

To sustain poetry.’ I sigh Amen.

SUBSOIL

The time has come for us to bury our fathers

I find that I have not turned the subsoil

My own time will come

And they may find me laggard for death

Contemplating the grub caught

On the lone tooth of my hoe

How it squirms with life, though broken

BOX OFFICE

Floorshow in the damned vale of tears,

A cachinnating magician steps in.

Stage name? History. Plucks out of thin air

Ears of Pennisetum. Blasts the guests

With his anti-poetics. Not of words.

Not of silence. Halitosis.

Nobody leaves. The impresario cries for joy.

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Who is Benson Eluma?