The Snowflakes Sail Gently Down by Gabriel Okara

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The snowflakes 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 elms 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.