My father’s body arrived at our compound
searching for a voice unsaddled with fear,
to fill up the void his life had left behind,
splintering the silence of sand,
creating ripples, waves and tornadoes,
where trees whirl, waters gurgle among leaves;
light supremely slipped under the duvet of grass,
amid fear of stopping the sprouting shrubs,
or sinking the burnt fields of aridity and dust
into a riverbed of gold handed down through dreams;
I fear the bursting flames of farms, dried-up riverbeds,
where roots groan for death, awaiting a new rain.
I reckon his body must be our last resort
which we threw at the sky with solemn prayers,
to confound the wise gods and bring a change.

I set up my father’s body on a palm tree,
turned him into a bird, singing from the top,
down to the foetus in the womb of his mother;
perhaps graves could tear open their granite lids
and cast away the dust reproach of their owners’ ears
to listen and hear the prayerful memes of his body
challenging the fascination of decay
and the longstanding delusion of our minds.
He died without the mandate to carry his body about,
after the light of his soul slowly slipped into a noose.
I turned his body into an altar of change, rebirth,
dispelling the gloam, revealing the truth,
that had lain dormant as the inevitable truth;
everything the listeners craved but feared to have,
without grace springing from their fatigue loins.

I attached a microphone to my father’s body,
to echo around our village, on treetops,
up to the mountain and valleys, down the hills,
where the landscape curves and glides to the river,
slowly into the yawning pit of the cave of their gods,
to become the twittering twigs they love,
lamenting how their streams have dried up
and their pain glowed through their eyes;
his voice reverberates the sound of his body,
when the groaning of angry gods blocks dawn.
My father’s body trounced the age-old trope
of slinging slowly, of graceful self-purge,
as though wars are worn by accepting defeat,
or without lacing muscles with wires.
I can hear the waves of his voice wash over leaves
into canticles navigating the lanes of hope.

Written by Jonathan Chibuike Ukah