My mother is sleeping

On my battered armchair.

It is night, and I have

Become a child again.

I remember her in my childhood years

Sleeping in dark corners

Where the rats chew the garri sacks

In our hot little room,

Or on wooden chairs in the green

Darkness, or on cement platforms

Near the gutter of the unforgiving

Street, through the unhappy nights

And the suffering years.

The remembrance rouses

In me dreams of strength,

And dreams of fear.

I watch over her as she gently sleeps.

The soft dreams flutter her eyelids.

Her quiet breathing, and the blessedness

Of kindly eyes that are shut tight

And the parted lips soothe

My anxious soul.

She is travel-weary

And has found her son.

How patiently she stayed awake

All those years, watching over us

In our heaving worrisome sleep

Of childhood, watching our

Future become our past.

Now that she sleeps

In my battered armchair

I know that she dreams well.

I am watching over her.

My turn has come round at last.

Someone said begin with a leap.

And so I leapt over the great

Sleep, with a heavy stone

In my head. But I was light

As a song, or an African

Bird, one you might

See in the safari of dreams.

So when I leapt over,

Where did I land?

These are questions for the sand.

It turns out the great sleep

Is a giant wall that’s made

Of inverted flowers,

Or songs that are sung

Inside out, if you know

What I mean.

When they wring you dry,

With pain and life and death,

When they break your legs

With blades and with feathers,

When they squeeze the mystery

Out of you, all that’s left

Is that stone, heavy as the earth.

Then they ask you to leap

Over your own death,

Without much hope;

And how do you do that,

In the sea or on land

Without drowning, without

Singing your protest in a sound?

These are questions for the sand.

But my hour drew near.

All the things I made

Were full of fear.

The flames and the birds

Were all that I could hear.

And as the night came on,

With pollen settling on the glass

Ceiling, and darkness grew

From all the lonely songs

In millions of lonely places,

And as the wings of death

Surrounded this ledge where

We stood before the great abyss,

That’s when someone

Said, ‘Begin with a leap.’

And like a lioness,

Like a piercing trumpet

Note, like the first colour of dawn,

Or like the brilliant tail-feathers

Of a love-struck peacock, or even

Like a shy kiss that starts a fire,

A touch that makes

A generation, or like rain

That covers the dry fields

With the music of the oracle,

I leapt right over the great sleep,

With a magnet in my heart.