[838] They Say

Guest poem sent in by Suchitra S <suchitras@>

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.

 	-- Ben Okri

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.