They Say
They say
Love grows
When the fear of death
Looms.
They say
Courage looms
When the fear
Of never loving again
Disappears
In the smell of the enemy
Who crushes us so much
We can only fight.
Love and courage grow together
When the flesh is rawest
And the spirit charged.
And distorted within the nightmare
We see the possibility
Of a future.
Commentary
I’ve always worshipped at the altar of verse that goes beyond mere word-play. Verse that is forged in the furnace of experience…and is so painful to write, that when it is eventually written, every word is as it should be.
But this one is not entirely sans joy.
It is about Hope and the Spirit and Dignity, and about coming into one’s own. About digging into one’s soul in moments of despair, and finding the jewels hidden there.
It is wonderful and reminds me of Dostoyevsky. Okri here seems on the verge of making some phantasmagoric, metaphysical revelation that might just heal.
— Suchitra
Links
The Ben Okri page at
http://www.uweb.ucsb.edu/~rbb0/academic/projects/okri/okri.html
contains an extensive set of Okri resources, including a biography.