Memory Of A Car Crash Poem by oluchukwu ifechukwu

I have wept now these whole thirty long years
Dating from this very first day of your ever living death
Yours and our dearly beloved son’s
Hoping desperately that it was something really:
The argument coarsely fervid and unconsequential
Which for that fleeting fatal moment dislocated my focus
Swerving our car from its uncontestedly clear and tarred bearing:
Hoping that it was something important really
Something that quite justifiably should unhinge a man
That quite justifiably should draw from me
These whole thirty death-long years of torrential tears
Being my first after the full two scores and seven years
Of my uncommonly dry and tearless days

Something that quite justifiably should ensnare me
In these eternal yearly cycles of fixing the very car
And breaking then again the very same car
That swept you and our dearly beloved son
Away into this unrelenting land of your ever living death
In the desperate, and silly, and fervent hope
That fixing and putting together all its scattered bits and pieces:
The crashed side mirrors and windscreen and rear-view mirror
The crumpled bonnet and doors, and the cracked dashboard
Clumsily dangling the broken tiny ceramic statue of the Madonna and Child:
That scrubbing and painting it exactly its old rust-grey colour
To look exactly as on this first day of your ever living death
Will fix me back you and our dearly beloved son

But all these annual cycles of workmanship fix me nothing
Except this accumulated freshness of your thirty-year long living death
That I begin afresh breaking the ever fraudulent car
In the same desperate, and oh blind defiant hope
That the next fixing escapade will perhaps fix me perhaps fix us, as of old
In the hope that the accumulated pathos of my tears
Gaining the uncommon high frequency and severity
Of these terribly lingering late September rains
Will perhaps animate the thirty-year long ceramic indifference
Of this remainder relic of the Madonna and Child
Hanging now from the rear-view mirror of our car
With the old vaunted clemency of the ever glorious and blessed Mary
Being posted there in the first place to deliver us from all dangers
To make up for these whole thirty long years of despised tearful petition.