To the Living by Richard Ntiru

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Only those

Who have survived

The final anaesthetization;

Those who have enacted the final epilogue;

Only those

Have the prescient perception 

Of the inner idea of life

And can partake of the spectral dance;

Only they

Have the inner knowledge

Of the numbing nutation 

On gravestill nights when nude priests, 

In mortal ecstasy,

Bless multicoloured antiamulets 

On virgin pelvicbone amphorae 

And celebrate prenatal deathdays 

To the rhythm of the drum of death

Struck with the thighbone 

Of him who died on his bridal night.

These are they

Who have bartered their bones 

And submitted to the savage salvation 

Of the caustic dew of the cold grave;

Only these

Understand the eloquence of the silence 

Between two echoes in a haunted cave.

Who but they

Who walk beyond the twilight glimmer 

Between sleep and waking,

Who bask in nocturnal sunlight 

And breathe the cool diurnal darkbreeze,

Who have experienced

The realization of the inevitable dream, 

Know the revitalizing power of the stilled blood?

But we,

We who clutch at tattered totems 

And turn away from solar solace 

When the innocence butter 

Melts in our hands at the ordeal,

We who raise open hands in supplication to Nyabingi- 

Hands that would embrace-- 

What dream are we capable of?