"Cities" by H. D.

Can we believe—by an effort

comfort our hearts:

it is not waste all this,

not placed here in disgust,

street after street,

each patterned alike,

no grace to lighten

a single house of the hundred

crowded into one garden-space.

**

Crowded—can we believe,

not in utter disgust,

in ironical play—

but the maker of cities grew faint

with the beauty of temple

and space before temple,

arch upon perfect arch,

of pillars and corridors that led out

to strange court-yards and porches

where sun-light stamped

hyacinth-shadows

black on the pavement.

**

That the maker of cities grew faint

with the splendour of palaces,

paused while the incense-flowers

from the incense-trees

dropped on the marble-walk,

thought anew, fashioned this—

street after street alike.

**

For alas,

he had crowded the city so full

that men could not grasp beauty,

beauty was over them,

through them, about them,

no crevice unpacked with the honey,

rare, measureless.

**

So he built a new city,

ah can we believe, not ironically

but for new splendour

constructed new people

to lift through slow growth

to a beauty unrivalled yet—

and created new cells,

hideous first, hideous now—

spread larve across them,

not honey but seething life.

**

And in these dark cells,

packed street after street,

souls live, hideous yet—

O disfigured, defaced,

with no trace of the beauty

men once held so light.

**

Can we think a few old cells

were left—we are left—

grains of honey,

old dust of stray pollen

dull on our torn wings,

we are left to recall the old streets?

**

Is our task the less sweet

that the larvae still sleep in their cells?

Or crawl out to attack our frail strength:

You are useless. We live.

We await great events.

We are spread through this earth.

We protect our strong race.

You are useless.

Your cell takes the place

of our young future strength.

**

Though they sleep or wake to torment

and wish to displace our old cells—

thin rare gold—

that their larve grow fat—

is our task the less sweet?

**

Though we wander about,

find no honey of flowers in this waste,

is our task the less sweet—

who recall the old splendour,

await the new beauty of cities?

**

The city is peopled

with spirits, not ghosts, O my love:

**

Though they crowded between

and usurped the kiss of my mouth

their breath was your gift,

their beauty, your life.

An extract from Nick Makoha’s poem titled Beatitude. He is Uganda born and lives in London.

When a rebel leader promises you the world seen in commercials,
he will hold a shotgun to the radio announcer’s mouth,
and use a quilt of bristling static to muffle the tears.

When the bodies disappear, discarded like the husk of mangoes.
He will weep with you in those hours of reckoning and judgement
into the hollow night when the crowds disperse.

When by paraffin light his whiskey breath tells you
your mother’s wailings in your father’s bed are a song
for our nation, sits with you on the veranda to witness the sunrise,

say nothing. Slaughter your herd. Feed the soldiers
who looted your mills and factories. Let them dance
in your garden while an old man watches.

Then when they sleep and your blood turns to kerosene,
find your mother gathering water at the well to stave off
the burning. Shave her head with a razor from the kiosk.

When the fury has gathered, take her hand and run
past the fields an odour of blood and bones. Past the checkpoint,
past the swamp to towards the smoky disc flaring in the horizon.

Run till your knuckles become as white as handkerchiefs,
Run into the night’s fluorescent silence. Run till your lungs
become a furnace of flames. Run past the border.

Run till you no longer see yourself in other men’s eyes.
Run past sleep, past darkness visible.
Stop when you find a country where they do not know your name.

©Copyright Nicholas Makoha 2012