{"id":969,"date":"2016-07-23T16:17:02","date_gmt":"2016-07-23T16:17:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mtls.wpcenter.io\/staging\/?p=969"},"modified":"2026-10-14T16:02:45","modified_gmt":"2026-10-14T16:02:45","slug":"harry-garuba","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mtls.ca\/issue22\/harry-garuba\/","title":{"rendered":"Harry Garuba"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Three Moods, One Sunday<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

 <\/strong>Dawn<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

dressed in white
\nshe lingered by the doorway
\nhanging to the knob with a gentle sway
\nas the sun walked through the
\ndoors of the east lighting up her eyes<\/p>\n\n\n\n

dressed in white
\nher face flowered before my eye
\na dress, a door, a knob, the sun<\/p>\n\n\n\n

i watched this Sunday scene
\nthe sun rising on my tongue
\nI mouth a simple chant<\/p>\n\n\n\n

at the threshold of this verb
\nyour soul will open like a flower<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Noon<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

a day of dull showers
\nsomnolent noon of rain
\nwarmed by a lukewarm light<\/p>\n\n\n\n

slowly, very slowly the weary hour stretch outside
\nlingering in dull puddles, brackish gutters,
\nthis cadence rides you slowly
\nlike a dream as you descend
\ninto an oasis of vowels<\/p>\n\n\n\n

every noun
\npronouns her absence
\nand in the void of the vowel
\nthe qualifiers become a cortege of sirens
\na procession of broken-hearted verbs
\nbrooding on this noon of her absence<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Night<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

grief grips us all
\nclouds wrangle in the skies
\nthe rain weary of its showers
\nmoans in the slums and
\ndarkness feeds on every face<\/p>\n\n\n\n

in the silence of the soul
\nechoes the voice of a lost dream<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a wasted rain, a wasted land\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Death of a Poem<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

(For Sesan Ajayi)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

there is a lie in every line that rhymes
\na line in every rhyme that lies<\/p>\n\n\n\n

to tell the tale of a boy who loved beauty
\nso much he could not take the warts
\nthat punctured the rhyming lyrics of his life
\nthe debris and the log that punctuated
\nthe flow of the river and the grace of the seagull<\/p>\n\n\n\n

he couldn\u2019t take it here
\nand one cloudless day
\nsunshine pouring like crystal showers
\nhis spirit soared above the skies
\nleaving behind the lies in the rhymes<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This dull, dull craft of words
\nCan it capture the dark delight of his life?<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Running Poem<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

nestled in my heart
\n<\/em>is an ache so strong
\n<\/em>it stabs and soothes,
\n<\/em>it lives and moves
\n<\/em>in the blood like a potion
\n<\/em>that kills and cures<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

for thirty years, I kept running,
\nrunning away from
\nfrom lines, verses, songs
\nrunning away from poetry<\/p>\n\n\n\n

on windy winter mornings,
\nwhen I remember
\nthe harmattan of my native land
\na verse will arrive like a line of egrets in flight
\nteasing the eye in curves, in angles, in poses, pure and picturesque,
\ni\u2019ll shut my eyes, close my heart to the coming poem<\/p>\n\n\n\n

and, sometimes at noon,
\nin the season of rains,
\nwhen the light, grainy and translucent,
\nladen with the dust of pollens,
\nsows a fragrance so strong the nostrils flare with delight\u2026
\nmemories of soothing oils, of spices, of flowers, flow
\nunto a delta of tropical passions and a new song surges within,
\na seasonal song, smelling of rain and grains and poems,
\ni shut down the senses, close my heart to the coming poem<\/p>\n\n\n\n

then, at night, when the evening wind blows
\nand from the distance the sound of flutes –
\nsailing through silence and solitude –
\nseeking the company of a poem to ride through the dark
\ni plug my ears, close my heart to the coming poem<\/p>\n\n\n\n

for thirty years,
\ni kept running, running away from poetry,
\nfrom lines, verses, and songs, closing my heart,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

until, this midnight hour, in a clasp of clockhands,
\nthrough a burst of fireflies, a verse stabbed me in the gut,
\npiercing through flesh and marrow and memory
\nand the blood flowed in lines, in verses, in songs<\/p>\n\n\n\n

running away from me\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

and there, in the motion of wings in flight,
\ni found you, hidden in the open place where the ache lives,
\nthe open place where the dream hides, waiting for wings\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Monkey Love<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

hanging from the branches of your arms
\ndreaming of bananas,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I long only for things prosaic
\nthings without poetry or fire<\/p>\n\n\n\n

like bread and flesh and earth
\nlike soil and seed and water<\/p>\n\n\n\n

like the body evidence of sweat,
\nundeodorized, fresh with odour,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

neither seas nor sunsets will serve this need<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I long only\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

to clasp the trunk of your body
\nand hug you like the monkey hugs the tree<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a hairy love in an embrace of leaves<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Three Moods, One Sunday<\/strong>
\n Dawn<\/em>\/
\ndressed in white
\nshe lingered by the doorway
\nhanging to the knob with a gentle sway
\nas the sun walked through the
\ndoors of the east lighting up her eyes…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2145,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-969","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mtls.ca\/issue22\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/969","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mtls.ca\/issue22\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mtls.ca\/issue22\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mtls.ca\/issue22\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mtls.ca\/issue22\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=969"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mtls.ca\/issue22\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/969\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2496,"href":"https:\/\/mtls.ca\/issue22\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/969\/revisions\/2496"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mtls.ca\/issue22\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2145"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mtls.ca\/issue22\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=969"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mtls.ca\/issue22\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=969"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mtls.ca\/issue22\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=969"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}