He wrote an epistle to the silence
And febrile months round him stalk
The torment of the scrawl, lone
Anthem to the book bereaved
And hours, and hopes that flew
In sightless aid for the titan Strike.
He bore the titan holes from beak to brain
Syllabus slipped, curriculum curled
Frozen to the naira exiled
From columns to rows, where it fled,
Bred the hatch of the halt, of direst demands
That stay invention by the gate –
No fatigue possible to mind
Assuaged the fever of the pause;
Waiting, he supposed, was such another
Curse to douse the sloth, of a phase of being
Immured to time’s passing death; for
Every night dropped to find no youth
Against his anxious eyes
Notions wilder, than the tousled class
Flickered through his wandering mind,
A season conquest, blue-penciled, potent
Pulses from erstwhile surges of algebra
Were reaped to compute the risk
Of a Stray’s relief, to brace the peril.
He vanishes.
One morning, I saw his face
Braced to iron bars on the fore
Of a penny newspaper; waiting –
Waiting the hour of a public lecture
At a conference of blabbermouths
I love this. Your choice of words are really enthralling… keep on noble poet…
Thank you for reading
Quite obscure for me, but well done.
@sambrightomo, I’d suggest you go through it again, the obscurity and ambiguity it suffers may become understood in a new light…
Well, the travails of the average Nigerian undergraduate are hardly obscure. You should review the poem as Inno rightly prescribed, and not just in words, but also in form. Thank you for commenting.