My Prison Bed

 

The first night gave signs of what was to come.

A reed mat on bare concrete, sand shovelled

in by foot from a beachy frontage, showed

what little room for comfort between flesh

 

and floor. Elbow for pillow, I smuggled

a dream of liberty into the small

fraction of night for which a trained army

of mosquitoes was ready to spill blood.

 

At dawn, five fingers pressed on the right cheek

branded me with ill-presumed tribal marks,

leaving me wondering why, seeing that Akin

with the right to the marks had a clean cheek.

 

You could say the first night was glorious, gave

a false picture, if spent in an office

whose chairs were made to vacate their tables; yes,

you could say we merely slept on duty!

 

No pampering place awaited us where we

were driven the second night. Stripped

now of all belongings but sleeping clothes,

the jailer's "Not exactly like your bed

 

at home", aimed at soothing two forlorn nights

in a row, mocked with uncommon cruelty,

the unhappy end of a journey home.

The worked steel barrier clanged, clicked shut its huge

 

and black padlock of Chinese make, shaking

the fog of tiredness out of our heads.

The room was, admittedly, large, nothing

close to the pride-of-place cell of prison

 

notes. And there were windows, telling clearly

that breathing was no offence. A sofa

nearing complete collapse, the bare steel props

of a giant close-circuit monitor,

 

testified to a once-furnished room, just

as the broken down air-conditioner,

the boarded space for another, and peeled

stays of carpet, described the conversion

 

from room to cell. We found our beddings - six

square pieces of foam, which could have been

cushions in happier days, and another

one, longer but thinner, and too narrow

 

for two. I made bed with it, a cushion

gained as I put it where no pressed bottom

could fart on it. Exhaustion dropped me down

to sleep, only to be sprung to my feet

 

in an instant by the foul smell of the

pillow. I moved beneath the flourescent

to examine the beddings with wakeful

calm, having perished the thought of sniffing

 

the entire bed. Under the light, they seemed

a salvage of the dung-heap, drenched and dried

under rain and sun, spat and pissed upon

to suit them to prisoners and their needs.

 

One such prisoner, I presume, startled

out of a wet dream, sprayed his vital fluids

to draw lines and ringed blotches on the foam.

Any sleep this night or the nights to come

 

lay in this bed or bare concrete without

a mat. I turned the foam, beat and brushed it

with a broom, turned also the foul pillow

and made peace with the smells of sleep in prison.

 

Ogaga Ifowodo

4 December 1997

 

 

Unmarked Hours Beat their Hands Against the Wall

 

Unmarked hours beat their hands against the wall

grieve for wings plunged in a waterfall.

Outside the window, a woman's shoulders

quake in tribute to a scene of soldiers:

teeth, fragments of flesh in warm blood painted

the picture she sees of those that fainted.

A single call to prayer, amplified

to all of Sin Town, brings mortified

legions to banal rites of righteousness.

As the minister swears his piousness

birds blessed with greater freedom flee our skies

abandoning us to death and muted cries.

Philosophies of suffering dress the walls

of this cell, make the fate of dead seagulls

happier than of failed hearts that bled and wept:

"If men were God!"  that mocked the cliff and leapt,

crying out their grief: "Let Nigeria end now!"

No one will inquire who, why or how,

an old or new decree has sanctified

all wrongs in duty personified.

Unmarked days quench their suns, black into nights

and dreams enact weighted hearts in free flights.

 

Ogaga Ifowodo

November 1997

 

 

 

As In Athens

 

Under the old tree - ancient, having drunk

the earth's dew before I groped for her breast -

they sit over tobacco and rude gin.

At the waist of the tree, where gods have their mouth

present offerings slobber down over the old,

freshen the browned blood of yester-tributes.

A breeze combs the green hair of coconut,

orange and mango trees hedging the yard

with the scent of the sea, combs, too, grey hairs.

With a warm heart and a cold eye on all

that passed and passes between earth and sky,

that could dwell in the air, land or water,

white beards read the mist of ages past

and present. And begins poetry and proverbs.

Under the big old tree. As in Athens.

 

Ogaga Ifowodo

10 February, 1998

 

(From Madiba, my second collection).