Undeserved Sweetness by Ben Okri

After the wind lifts the beggar From his bed of trash And blows to the empty pubs At the road's end There exists only the silence Of the world before dawn And the solitude of trees. Handel on the set mysteriously Recalls to me the long Hot nights of childhood spent In malarial slums In the midst of potent shrines At the edge of great seas. Dreams of the past sing With voices of the future. And now the world is assaulted With a sweetness it doesn't deserve Flowers sing with the voices of absent bees The air swells with the vibrant Solitude of trees who nightly Whisper of re-invading the world. But the night bends the trees Into my dreams And the stars fall with their fruits Into my lonely world-burnt hands. *****