{"id":16095,"date":"2021-03-09T08:00:06","date_gmt":"2021-03-09T13:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/?p=16095"},"modified":"2021-05-25T13:06:45","modified_gmt":"2021-05-25T17:06:45","slug":"the-poetry-corner-9-march-2021","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/2021\/03\/09\/the-poetry-corner-9-march-2021\/","title":{"rendered":"The Poetry Corner – 9 March 2021"},"content":{"rendered":"

[To read an introduction to this column, please see the first paragraph of the previous post here<\/a>]<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

This week I would like to share a poem I found recently from the Nigerian poet Gbenga Adesina. The following poem I discovered in the Fall 2020 issue of Narrative<\/em> magazine. It is titled \u201cAcross the Sea: A Sequence\u201d:<\/p>\n

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\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Across the Sea: A Sequence\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/strong>Gbenga Adesina\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/strong><\/p>\n

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1.
\nAcross the Sea<\/strong><\/p>\n

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The bottom of the sea is cruel.<\/em>\u00a0\u2014 Hart Crane.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

i
\nOn the sea, your prayer is not to the whorl scarf
\nof waves. Your prayer is to the fitful sleep of the dead.
\nLook at them, their bodies curve darkly without intention
\nand arrow down into the water. What do you call a body
\nof water made of death and silence? The sea murmurs
\non the pages of this book. There are bones buried in the water
\nunder these lines. Do you hear them, do you smell them?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

ii
\nIn the panic of drowning, there are hands lifting babies
\nup in the air, out of the water, for breath. A chorus
\nof still pictures brought this news to me, to us. Because we do
\nnot see the bodies sinking, because we do not see their mouths
\nalready touching water, the hands lifting up the babies look almost
\nordinary. Like the Greeks lifting their newborns unto the sky.
\nWhat is the failure of dead? That they sink?
\nOr that they sink with what is in their hands?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The children of God are upon frightened waters,
\nAnd God being hunger, God being the secret grief of salt
\nmoves among his people and does not spare them.
\nThe children of God are upon frightened waters.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

iii
\nThere is a child whose protest is of eyes.
\nShe has crossed the water with her mother,
\nthey are shivering, waiting for her father, two days now, they are
\nwaiting,
\nshivering for a father the mother knows would never arrive.
\nThe mother holds the child, she says to her, gently:
\n\u201cIt\u2019s a brief death. Your father has gone on a brief death.
\nHe\u2019ll soon be back.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

v
\nA man is bent on his knees, wailing at the waters.
\nHe slaps his hand on the wet sand and rough-cut stones
\nthe way one might fight a brother.
\nHe grabs the shirt of the sand as though they are in a tussle.
\nThe stones here carry the island\u2019s low cry inside them.
\nA landlocked grief. They say the man was a newlywed.
\nNow his vows are inside the water.
\nHe claws at the sand. He wails: \u201cOcean,
\nyou owe me a body. Ocean, give me back my lover.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

vi
\nThink of the boats. The timber comes from Egypt.
\nThey are cut into diagonals and made pretty. They
\nare polished by hands. Their saplings are watered by the Nile.
\nThe White Nile flows through Khartoum
\nbefore it puts its teeth into the Mediterranean.
\nThe waters and the trees eat bodies.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The children of God are upon frightened waters,
\nAnd God being hunger, God being the secret grief of salt
\nmoves among his people and does not spare them.
\nThe children of God are upon frightened waters.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

2.
\nComa<\/strong><\/p>\n

The silence is a prairie country. The silence
\nis the silence of hospital sheets.
\nThe silence is of IV tubes, veins, quiet siren of ghosts.
\nThe silence is the silence of what
\nis dappled invisibly by a body
\nthat is no longer human but not yet a ghost. The silence in your
\nbody has lodged in my throat.
\nSilence, can you hear me?<\/em>\u00a0The silence is of lime,
\nand kraal stones. The silence is not shadow
\nbut the light of a body buried under a mound of rough stones.
\nThe silence is the silence
\nof hands.\u00a0Hands, wire-vine hands, can you hear me?<\/em>
\nThe silence is the silence of broken ribs.
\nThe silence is the silence of the head,
\nshorn and shaven. The silence is silence of a bandage wrapped
\ntight around what is sunken, what is fallen in the gait of the head.
\nHead,
\ncan you hear me?<\/em>
\nThe silence is silence of blood,
\nseething through filament of bandage.
\nBlood, can you hear me?
\nFather, blood, Father can you hear me?<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

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I have read this poem multiple times and every time I discover something new about it. Each section is a separate scene, but they are all connected by themes of water, death, and the struggle for connection and survival. The language, images, rhythm, line breaks, and everything is so striking to me, by the end I\u2019m left speechless. What do you see in it? I would love to read your thoughts in the comments below!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[To read an introduction to this column, please see the first paragraph of the previous post here] \u00a0 This week I would like to share a poem I found recently from the Nigerian poet Gbenga Adesina. The following poem I discovered in the Fall 2020 issue of Narrative magazine. It is titled \u201cAcross the Sea: […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2238,"featured_media":16096,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1334],"tags":[1688,1221,320,1690,265,224,1689,1687,1692,281,1574,15,1143,1751,1693,1680,1691],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16095"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2238"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16095"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16095\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16097,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16095\/revisions\/16097"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16096"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16095"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16095"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16095"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}