Goodness Tchibueze Poems

I compare you to the diamond eye of the sky
Which leads the weary, blind night without blinking;
As you cast a glowing glance, dreams comply:
Pouring beauty to the minds of men without sparing.
...

Mutiat, the name with the diamond's age,
The way to nature's bank of life,
The herb from nature's unleafed page;
You are the strength to whittle life's strife.
...

Patchily graded the clean cloud seemed,
Denuding a vast acre of the sky;
The giant, fiery orange emerged esteemed,
Saddling the horizon a little nigh
...

Absence and distance might have kept them,
And the aching of the arms to be warmed, together;
Unmindful of the prominent sun, each faced the other:
A lad and a lass; the sun, inbetween, stood saturninely,
...

From the plains and plateaux
Of the Guinea savannah,
Came, with a calabash loosely
Hanging on her head,
...

I had a girl - Kel:
She was lissom, pliant and pleasing, a gel;
Her sparkling teeth shamed the sun, my angel;
Tho' together in love we were, oft we fell,
...

Come to this, who toll a disconsolate bell...:
Though the Sun upon her youthfulness marches,
Summer's breath oft her leaves smites to arches;
And Weather off course veers in suddenness,
...

Before the elephant breaks the food-speaking drum,
And pestilence heals the land in the next recompensed
Beat; scour the scraps scattered in your minds,
...

Does Worry sleep and wake with the day,
While her trails in the sand of memory lay?
Hearts oft seem to crumple and compress,
And pulsations into the shell of fear retrogress:
...

The nauseating scent
Of mixed blood and mist
Stifled fresh air
From the lungs of Morn,
...