Kendel Hippolyte
All this is language
All this is language
(for Ayodele and Idara)
This, all this, is language:
a sullen mob of rain distant and murmuring,
wind whispering low rumour in the bushes,
clear shout of light over the hill.
The earth is utterance:
hosanna! is the scattering of pigeons,
hallelujah! stands the tree in the noon hour,
selah, the psalmody of waves in the late afternoon.
Branches like epileptic prophets in the wind
gibber wild questions at blue silence
and the taciturn ground, in sudden joyful places
cries: chrysanthemum! rose! bougainvillaea!
i listen, half-remembering....
The river, talking often in its sleep
a long sentence, an incantation
of silver and white feeling tumbling too quick for thought ...
damn, the river makes no sense at times
but words are like that
especially when spoken, like wind and water words.
So lately i trust the rocks especially;
they write their messages.
They intend, like all the ancient poets,
their words should take the weathering
of time, stay true as epitaphs.
Awed by that vocabulary – of things themselves –
i am illiterate, dumb before them.
This morning now, raw wind tearing away leaves,
the sky unscrolls
that puzzling calligraphy of clouds again.
i shake my head, turn to
the rugged cuneiform of dry-river stones,
quick script of wind on grass,
blackbirds printed on blue morning -
all, everything, like ciphers in a code,
hieroglyphic messages i used to know....
On days like this
i try to read the earth-poem
but a scrawl of haze, a smoke
from something charred, but smouldering
sneers over the landscape.
Singed, the young grass twinges
memory, the scent of childhood insidiously accurate
rises acridly and stings.
On days like this my eyes run
and everything is blurred
© Kendel Hippolyte
