Elbowroom | by Ehindola Ayo

Aside in prostrating portraiture

  On the angular lane and here

  I shall not now in canon-stringed wreath

         Sacrifice my exit

       He had come, the Savior sowing

          and within a wellspring 

Through this parted elbowroom

In this desert molten bowel

In this bask rooms of sandy pavement

 of its powdery

 of its sun-bleached slate bed

She was brought to me the sole witness to my liberating limbo

    

She with mud pipe;

                 The only lane to go

            Through this barren ocular curve

               To my promontory port

     

      as the beam escort her Tigress limb 

      Down the courtyard of countless corridor

             Of Counted doorways

    Her ushering ordeal is a beckoning ray

   Weaving through the panel of her sandal

                on her winged shod

     Upon the loom of days and rare inlays

              Of cornered stone work

      her eyes plucked in shell of monocle

   Surveying this tangled mud string lane

Progression with a mud pipe; of passage

      Upon this withered branch

   Where I have leaned my manacles

      Upon this sun-baked gravel

    I shall paddle my tricycle*

Even as both pole dangles in hunger slaughter

       Still it shall go on bearing

    With this torn stringed wreath roll

          Like this maid's osuka**

This basket full of heavenly liquid

          The Savior will not come again

          But I shall to the Savior bear

          This basket of heavenly water

          For He had come, the saviour sowing

            And within a wellspring

Ehindola Peter is a Nigerian poet, reviewer and blogger. He curates Unsung Elegy, a literary site of poetry and criticisms.