Guest poem sent in by Suchitra S
(Poem #838) They Say They say Love grows When the fear of death Looms. They say Courage looms When the fear Of never loving again Disappears In the smell of the enemy Who crushes us so much We can only fight. Love and courage grow together When the flesh is rawest And the spirit charged. And distorted within the nightmare We see the possibility Of a future. |
I've always worshipped at the altar of verse that goes beyond mere word-play. Verse that is forged in the furnace of experience...and is so painful to write, that when it is eventually written, every word is as it should be. But this one is not entirely sans joy. It is about Hope and the Spirit and Dignity, and about coming into one's own. About digging into one's soul in moments of despair, and finding the jewels hidden there. It is wonderful and reminds me of Dostoyevsky. Okri here seems on the verge of making some phantasmagoric , metaphysical revelation that might just heal. Suchitra Links: The Ben Okri page at http://www.uweb.ucsb.edu/~rbb0/academic/projects/okri/okri.html contains an extensive set of Okri resources, including a biography.
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