Image: © Manchester Museum, The University of Manchester
For my Grandfather
In the old elm that crowded our backyard fence
a lone magpie cawked— a woman was wading
her feet through a water that had found its way
into her stead, & she cursed heavily— is it God
that allows these things, or some sort of partial loss
of hearing we are yet to identify among ourselves?
There is a reason why I do not allow myself the easy
luxury of guilt; I want a daughter who will take
care of me when I am old, not a son who would run
off to fight another man’s war. & Like my father’s
father, I don’t want to be the man who grieves as the
names of his dead roll out before him. I do not
wish to try to evoke a face to go with the endless list
of names. I wish to be sturdy— a cherubic health.
I don’t want to lose anything. The loneliness will outlast me.
The night before my grandfather died, I watched
how languor crept upon his limb. Summer came &
vanished the sound of the children’s laughter.
In his dying bed, all he ever wanted to talk about was
prom dates in the 1900s. The girls, long-limbed
in their long summer-dresses; how he wished he spoke
to one of them— any of them. He shook his head like
it was coming out of a dream. The sun dipping beneath
the horizon. God’s thumb pressing heavily on his eyelid—
& even in death the flesh is strong; it wants always to go on.
To give in is to let the pain recede into a darkness
like a cautious animal. & all I could do was watch the beauty.
The richness & a sheen upon the leaves of the elm
tree in the backyard. Death, so beautiful as it lies on the
soft brown earth, & the grasses wavering over
the head it has claimed. My grandfather, his fingers
loosening & the sheets they had held moved slowly
& then swiftly across the still body & I watched
them fall into the silence of the room.
____
Prosper C. Ìféányí is a Nigerian poet. His works are featured or forthcoming in Black Warrior Review, Lolwe, Denver Quarterly, and elsewhere.