Tag: BURNING BOOK

From Book-banners to Book-burners for Jack Mapanje

II

Tell me:

What is the colour of burning books

Is it the chalky anthem of the egret’s December glide

Is it the indelible indigo of agbe’s plumes

Is it the eloquent fire on ayekooto’s tail

Is it the rainbow’s arc on the sky’s bewildered face?

Who struck the match

Who fanned the flame

Into ill-literate adolescence?

Tell me:

What colour, the flame of a burning book?

          III

There is a stubborn echo

In the legend of the letter

Whose butterfly turns eagle

In the palms of crushing kings

Whose earthworm is cobra

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Beneath the tramping heel

Beyond edicts, beyond statutes,

Beyond the fiery imprimatur of uniformed nescience

The letter lives

Beyond the Emperor’s metallic behest

On the cobblestone

Of slippery nights,

On both sides

Of the Bridge of Fearless Wisdom

Notes

Published here with a slight amendment of the original version

Reference to Ifa divination among the Yoruba: the diviner seeks the grains of truth by tracing hidden visions on a tray of sands

Agbe is a bird with deep-blue plumage

 Ayekooto: the world-abhors-the-truth (a Yoruba name for the parrot).

(Concluded)

From Book-banners to Book- burners)

for Jack Mapanje

… a good Booke is the pretious life-blood of a master spirit, imbalm’d and treasur’d up on purpose to a life beyond life

 John Milton: Areopagitica, 1644

These, still, are seasons of rapid edicts

Let running tongues mind the bend

On Memory’s road

The censor’s voice drops,

oath-laden,

like a wrathful axe:

silence rules the twilight

of bleeding words;

an orphaned lyric limps along,

curse-coated,

larynxed by muted whispers

The glossy glide of new books,

future-bound

with orchards of vigilant leaves

polyglot bridge of severed musings

oracle of a million fables

counting Wisdom’s kernels in

white and luminous black**

The despot’s scourge,

magic scrawls on his iron wall,

the bearded prophet of every vowel

ringing bells which claim the calm

of stolen dawns

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The Queen’s goiter

the Emperor’s swagger,

alphabets which reek, every letter,

with the stench of gilded chambers,

the wind which bares the rumps

of hen-pecked braggarts …..

It hides what they seek

it seeks what they hide;

they who cover raging smokes

with the basket of murderous lies

The moon laughs in its sky

knowing so well the journal

of passing frenzies

These, still, are seasons of rapid edicts

Let running tongues mind the bend

On Memory’s road

To Continue next week