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Undeserved Sweetness

After the wind lifts the beggar

From his bed of trash

And blows to the empty pubs

At the road's end

There exists only the silence

Of the world before dawn

And the solitude of trees.

 

Handel on the set mysteriously

Recalls to me the long

Hot nights of childhood spent

In malarial slums

In the midst of potent shrines

At the edge of great seas.

 

Dreams of the past sing

With voices of the future.

And now the world is assaulted

With a sweetness it doesn't deserve

Flowers sing with the voices of absent bees

The air swells with the vibrant

Solitude of trees who nightly

Whisper of re-invading the world.

 

But the night bends the trees

Into my dreams

And the stars fall with their fruits

Into my lonely world-burnt hands.

_______

 

Source:

http://www.universeofpoetry.org/nigeria.shtml

b
Written by
Ben Okri
1959 - / South African
Lines·Words
28·136
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