poetry
FIRST PRIZE WINNER – SENTINEL LITERARY
QUARTERLY POETRY COMPETITION (OCTOBER 2009) Moving Kumasi, 1967 by AKINLABI PETER 1 i would not know you
if not for the lights riding forth through
the retaining walls of the ungovernable
river… we had forded water
to the rail lines reciting the
lapidary psalms of the baptists but arrived home to
a startled flight of voices a frightful moment
later, lights of devotion
falling again through the ashen
pulse of the wind, i dog-eared the intimation on
the dark bulrushes of Kumasi and that is how i
was ferried home incomplete,
cultivating another time while the dissonant
meaning lets in a daunting disbelief a child again,
i fold a geography of loss into your eyes of
secret, into the grieving fondness of that district
that women called Lagostown 2 so you will go
through to Kumasi again you will remember
how the days passed between the terraces
and the grotto you will recall the
seduction of a quiet surrender maybe you will
remember too a child’s
unfettered heart; an atrocious gift wrapped in the
riddle of a sunset; arms outstretched unto the sky of an
abandoned house ah, the sudden
dampness of departure now you perfect your
gift of double faith- hope it still
retains its reins of cool closures- admitting your
weightless, interminable narrative a bridge, you say,
to a transmissible life when you arrive in
Kumasi, you might cleanse
the memory of sun dusts searching the
direction of clouds towards Ababu or you might come
undone reading the signs of
recent dawns on a tall building the river will be
unfamiliar- if you find it- but the lights will
still be the same playing the meanings
with things in memory you can look for the
fey swell of the bulrushes and count the
degrees of pain in the architecture of loss | 
