Obemata
the flood this time
is an accomplice of death which summons life
to death. there’s no comfort
in the news breaking from places under water
that have become pus-filled wounds. there are no interludes, respite, reliefs,
only misery, grief, ruin.
you, i mean you, can only imagine the furies of rivers,
greater than a corked wine;
the power of water
in its indignant rage taking
friends and foes as captives
before freeing them
and losing itself
in the distant sea,
and i know you cannot lose
your memories of your interred city, streets, homes,
playgrounds, ponds,
or forget the cries of people
clinging to straws
bobbing in the flood
that announces more deaths
by drowning.
*water couplet*
I
water floods the memory
of this land with its wettest
gifts. what’s memory without water which
signifies remembrance?
what’s water without
courses which signify
the journey of water?
II
where does water’s journey
end? where all named
places, nameless things,
stay nameless or named?
or where the land clings
to straws, time sinks
into sinkholes of water
drowning out the cries
of victims, or in rooms
where it drowns memories,
on woodland, not of wood,
where it stops floating
to compose its exalted self,
to write its history,
constitution and to reissue eviction notices?
III
who shall record the history
of water, tracts of land
sacked by rivers yielding to foreign water than wellness?
the proof water has to prove
is that sinkholes
aren’t its destination,
journey’s end.
IV
what remains of land
after water recedes?
forests, of no shade
swamps, of no mangroves.
what’s the only thing you see
now? water everywhere.
what are the two things
you are staring at now
that you can’t describe?
chaos. death.
what are the three things
washed away from you now
that you can never retrieve?
life. mind. joy.
V
water, we can only
walk on dry land.
