The Snow Flakes Sail Gently Down By Gabriel Okara

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The Snow Flakes Sail Gently Down 

By Gabriel Okara

The snow flakes sail gently

down from the misty eye of the sky 

and fall lightly lightly on the 

winter-weary elms. And the branches, 

winter-stripped and nude, slowly 

with the weight of the weightless snow 

bow like grief-stricken mourners 

as white funeral cloth is slowly 

unrolled over deathless earth. 

And dead sleep stealthily from the 

heater rose and closed my eyes with 

the touch of silk cotton on water falling.

Then I dreamed a dream

In my dead sleep. But I dreamed 

not of earth dying and elms a vigil 

keeping. I dreamed of birds, black 

birds  flying in my inside, nesting 

and hatching on oil palms bearing suns 

for fruits and with roots denting the 

uprooters' spades. And I dreamed the 

uprooters tired and limp, leaning on my roots-

their abandoned roots- 

and the oil palms gave them each a sun

But on their palms

they balanced the blinding orbs 

and frowned with schisms on their 

brows-for The suns reached not 

the brightness of gold! 

Then I awoke. I awoke 

to the silently falling snow 

and bent-backed elma bowing and 

swaying to the winter wind like white-robed 

Moslems salaaming at evening prayer, 

and the earth lying inscrutable like 

the face of a god in a shrine.