DARK WATERS of the beginning.
Rays, violet and short
piercing the gloom,
Foreshadow the rain that is dreamed of.
On far side a rainbow
arched like boa bent to kill
foreshadows the rain that is dreamed of.
Me to the orangery
solitude invites,
a wagtail, to tell
the tangled-wood-tale;
a sunbird, to mourn
a mother on a spray.
Rain and sun in single combat;
on one leg standing
in silence at the passage
the young bird at the passage.
(The version in Labyrinths, available here, is slightly different.)
Posted by languagehat at January 1, 2010 06:29 PM!!!!
Collected Poems (Hardcover)
~ Christopher Okigbo
Available from these sellers.
4 used from $157.31
Posted by: marc at January 2, 2010 02:02 PMYikes! I picked up my copy of Labyrinths (Africana, 1971) at the Yale Co-op on June 1, 1979, for a couple of bucks; I still remember the excitement I felt on opening the slim volume by an author I'd never heard of and reading the confident modernist verse that is still the best English-language poetry from Africa I know of. Okigbo should be much better known than he is.
Posted by: language hat at January 2, 2010 04:12 PMYou just described my reaction to this poem. Hence the disappointing Amazon search...
I'll keep my eye out at Half-Priced Books.
Posted by: marc at January 2, 2010 07:13 PMThe whole book is like that. Come on, publishers, reprint it!
Posted by: language hat at January 2, 2010 08:01 PMSeriously. Bookfinder's only hit is a hundred and fifteen bucks!
Posted by: jamessal at January 2, 2010 08:17 PMThey've got the collected pomes for $83.
Posted by: A.J.P. Crown (Dr) at January 3, 2010 08:07 AMI wonder if the rights have slipped into limbo, so that nobody can legally reprint them, or if the current holders of the rights has unreasonably high expectations of their value, so that nobody can afford to reprint them? (Okigbo died in the Biafra War, over four decades ago.)
Posted by: language hat at January 3, 2010 08:47 AMHow awful.
Posted by: A.J.P. Crown (Mrs) at January 3, 2010 12:44 PM