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