Where The News Came To Me of The Fall of a Verse by Oyin Oludipe

(For Osare Gbenga)

It was an evening of patient storms
The street was shrill, the street was livid
Serf-route to contused spaces of a
Jailed universe. To an old book order
All prances breed grades or rites
That threaten turns on sedate winds;
Lecture holes, the babble of stripe skies,
Ranting on zebra crossings left him warm.
He only prayed his world had chosen differently
To wreathe the brow of sterile, bedraggled roads
Feeling lost among the haste of pulses - of hellos -
And usurers of worry, like a tyrant's cry,
Levy subversion...

It was an irate evening, it was an incessant
Evening, an inhuman break of silence,
A sudden wealth of cold that somehow
Trailed the headlong coil of a distant pen,
A searing glow or simply, a conquest dance
Suddenly, one stray leaflet parade through
Desolate pillars roused lone in an inch
Of memory. Discounted, a sodden eye
Among the stain of anguish sought retreat
In transgression of the astonished
As the spidery touch of an ancient tomb.
Beneath the turbid undertone: Now what
Has this world become? I did not see the poet
Escape! Perhaps he wore his ransom in his teeth,
A triumphant grin leashing the fever
Even before flesh turns pale, wove
Spirit cords to transcend dark mists

It was a wild evening, Osare, a foul
Desert wilderness communion from that far
Lightning rod made interloper when the
Firmament shut and your verse fell;
Your heart, I know, has slowed with earth's
Passionless errands. I know your mind
Wisely spawns and drifts with seasons,
Tunes to the feeblest breeze yet fragments
Discard on light-years of struggle.
I know your bounty, Osare - silver coins,
Grandeur, a glory's unhurried leap - I know
Your burdened nostalgia for the past,
Blackened diagnosis to shed your essence
On barren domes of contemplation...

I hope it is evening on your end, Osare
I hope as pure and vivid it is, where the news
Came to me of the fall of a verse