.png){kind=logo}
Come Thunder - Christopher Okigbo
"NOW that the triumphant march has entered the last street corners,
Remember. O dancers, the thunder among the clouds …
Now that the laughter, broken in two, hangs tremulous between the teeth,
Remember, O dancers, the lightning beyond the earth …
The smell of blood already floats in the lavender-mist of the afternoon.
The death sentence lies in ambush along the corridors of power:
And a great fearful thing already tugs at the cables of the open air,
A nebula immense and immeasurable, a night of deep waters –
An iron dream unnamed and unprintable, a path of stone.
The drowsy heads of the pods in barren farmlands witness it,
The homesteads abandoned in this century's brush fire witness it:
The myriad eyes of deserted corn cobs in burning barns witness it:
Magic birds with the miracle of lightning flash on their feathers …
The arrows of God tremble at the gates of light,
The drums of curfew pander to a dance of death:
And the secret thing in its heaving
Threatens with iron mask
The last lighted torch of the century"