Silence

By Chukwujekwu Nweke

Before these sacred groves

Darkness gathers to keep trysts;

Silence re-echoes in this cold labyrinth

And belches in feeble innocence

Over this celestial horizon

Where earthen vessels are borne

On the shoulders of strangeness!

Dark winds whirl by, rustling,

In spontaneous emergence

Bearing hearths weaved with blood.

Anthills rage in chaotic melancholy

Rummaging and splashing the jaws

Of earth; tossing up carcasses

In shreds and in deepening gloom.

Marauding myriads of vultures

Your freshness waiting to ruminate;

Feeding on that sacredness

Ever for me preserved.

The gold has rusted;

And the spring from which

I sip now astray gone.

The music remains silent

And the drumbeat echoes no more.

Coldness folds me in his fingerless arms

As here emerge mounds

Interlocked with wild rumpled faces;

And grave ruins of muted hearts.

Here, in this cold crypts,

Nature has belched thee

Where mortality abounds no more.