Kirakita Poem by Oludipe Samuel

'We know the path to promise, a richer cairn
Of kindest hearts.' It was nation, outspoken
In burdens, seeking the once misplaced
Barefaced revolts of every hope
Spun to torment of the good-forsaken moments.
Of the spirit, locket residues are not safe — or were never
Voices of water prophets rose still the next panic, diurnal
So...let all be placed. Let a billion throng
Displease the caveat cry of sparring worlds
For the itch of throat and musts of depraved mind
Then pacts, gains and bargains, rents,
Luxuries and time-tables. Till that cry
Reincarnates serenity in the lash, in the gut
Of earth; impervious is the seal of regrets
The grind of suntanned limbs daring stake a fortune
Fraught spirits, from home to homes, surviving
Wants, hawking creeds

'We know the path to promise'. The dawn is cove
For the vigilant eye, as the shutters open
All motes are entrances to cornucopia
The outside grime may reveal chests, not
Utensils to till soil but rims of gold, incipient,
Displaces a benediction of yawns that haul us
To magical embraces of somnolence. Yet no. Nutriments
Lay on the misty crossroads, ebos*, casted
Morning wraps and kneaded faeces of daemons
Gilded with a million chakras. Strive
Is the new descant of hamlets, survived
In cosmopolitan fashions. They tore grimly on
To foreign stock-reeds, lavished the bounty to gauge
The span of marooned starvation when it longed
To touch the faraway eaves of home.
Still, impervious is the seal of regrets
Appetite-chimes resound past cosmic confines

And Kirakita rebounds from shaded stalls,
Savage bazaars, swirled, at marines in profligate
Tunes of timeless bargains, raging nymphs
Sold in sacks to omit the next rebirth
Of senseless haste — oblivious to libations, oozing
From ligneous beasts of the eternal seas
Rootless, unequalled with the world of flesh.
Are ours to wilt, bottomless, beneath the scrub of distress
Between toes crush realm ancestries of landscapes
Subterranean as feet of hearths, as the icy barren warren?
“But we know the path to promise”
Amid our footfalls, let apprehensions exorcise
Spores of recreation, at feud with gluttony
…No more, has earth wailed? Fading rain-tree
Hoard the sap? The wilting heavens as sacrilegious
To man, as man to himself, once reprieved itself?

Still, here we stick before the depletion, keen on more
Falter at routes that lead the unmapped course
Inwards and inwards only; flare and flicker about
The deepest core. Yet, we know the path to promise,
The path to slighter desecrations, bustles
Of a cryptic kind and furtive pilgrimages
Attuned to blood-spattered pulses. Mystics
Seize the throne of hearts. I have seen Kirakita,
An orchard of aching looks. It bred
While I slept, their eyelashes creased as my trance,
Accustomed to displeasures
…and the dearest demise