—Two Movements after Abdullah Ibrahim’s Once Upon a Midnight
I
The angel who swept dusk off the sky suffers
from forgetfulness. Did not remember to pin stars,
& licked the moon into a lean arc. Give me the orange
splash of noon against walls, branches of banana trees
interlocked like elbows, swaying to the bumble
of sparrows. Not this. Not this loneliness swelling
like a boil, the shiv of insomnia drilling into the scalp.
The neighbors think they are quiet, but love
exposes everything the way light does. On
the other side of the wall, I am pulling through
the night like a thread through a wound.
On the other side of my life, the sun
has begun its sermon to the leaves,
promising an endless green.
II
When the dream entered the room, its hands
were red from adventure, from knocking on skulls
street to street to street, the child’s, the woman’s,
the dog’s — knocking, knuckles wet, knocking,
room to room to room. To think the unseen
are lonelier than we are. To think the eye’s soft
is a door that only swings inwards, exacting its own
violence, othering everything, even dreams.
I admit culpability. I,
myself, am sealed all over,
skin taut over skull like a condom.
To the dream:
Your bruise will persist into daylight.
The yam-slice of dawn will tumble into your mouth.
I am sorry for increasing your loneliness, I said.
But I was dreaming
my stubbornness. Asleep the way palm oil does
at the bottom of a keg.
Pamilerin Jacob is a poet & editor whose poems have appeared in Barren Magazine, Agbowó, IceFloe Press, Palette, The Rumpus & elsewhere. He is the curator of PoetryColumn-NND, a poetry column in Nigerian NewsDirect, a national newspaper.