Exiled
Poem by Sochukwu Ivye
This lifeless vale of lying bones and skulls
houses no one, or days that we have had
but shall have us in court as the sort calls.
It is the grim reaper’s with a large scythe,
argus-eyed, clothed in a black cloak, with.
a hood; although many painters say lithe.
Empty gourds with a parrot’s egg in each,
he would open, snipping a thread. I bruit,
this bridge of asses widely borne eldritch.
Now, promise me that you will be alright.
’tis, here, walking the path over the orbs
with limbs flung wide as in a windy flight.
Ay! It is a toy horse caused to come forth;
so, stretched out to view. For a name it is,
too, upon potsherds or shells effaced not.
Free from the open life and held endwise
in lack of ease; a discharge without dues
earned for the airies and fell Lord of flies,
Lower me in the depth the grave did cast
beneath your breast to envelop my case;
hereupon, you will get whole at long last.
As for the ill hoe and spade that inhume,
and this disc of the moon across the blue,
fly at the thewy wings of his foul broom.
Sochukwu Ivye is a linguistic stylistician, a rhythmist and a distinctive metrist. His epic, The Great Cold, is the longest metrical poem by an African.