by Ben Okri
open your head
to the wisdom
of the heavens
listen to the whispers
breathe the fragrance
of survivors.
windrush, chainrust, slaveburst.
ancestors dreaming in the shrines.
us their courage,
us their fire illumines.
shine a light that’s so bright
it burst all the darkness.
write the magic of our souls
on the darkness of the night.
like stars the shrines
stream out the veiled brilliance
of the ancestors
who with the clarity of their thought
opened up new futures.
those triple-locked steel doors
that we open with the magic touch
of our light-charged spirit.
oh but the spirits are singing
in the hidden glow
the more they keep us down
the greater we will grow.
they’re rowdy and they know.
they know
they know
they know
they know the revelations of saint time
things that every day are becoming true
coming up through the shrine
coming up for me and for you.
COSMOSIS
For Tony Allen
let us talk about the science
of how things break;
how the heart breaks;
how the age founders and shatters,
with no one listening;
how the mind quakes,
how we lose all that matters.
oh the music of the bones,
music of flowers and wise stones
let’s talk about the art
of how things break
things that were hard to make
things like peace and love and mead
how the lands shake
how the good is lost to the fake
oh breathe change by osmosis
change and the music of cosmosis
but sufis sing of how things turn
things the others want to bury or burn
things like unity, friendship, relativity
things that when dead we’ll mourn
how the music runs in the stream
can we in these troubled times dream?
oh the spirits dancing in the slipstream
power and fire in the drumdream
MOTHER DANCE
surprise at being a mother.
always had the dream.
always had the fear.
sometimes the life and dream
seem in conflict.
had to stop being
a warrior to go through
that door.
but the spirit of this child
called to me from afar
deep in the fire of dance.
she’s the dance, the real dance
of life and love and truth.
in her birth was i born again
into the mysterious world
of motherhood. tuned in,
more than a twin,
to her every cry and need.
the child makes the mother,
and the mother blesses the world.
FOR MIRABELLA
she turned up in the world
with a half-smile on her face.
i’ve been puzzled by that half-smile.
no one tells you how hard it is.
best if it’s kept secret.
it’s a kind of initiation
into some of the secret truths
of life. didn’t sleep twenty minutes
in eight days. that’s nothing compared
to how hard for the mother it has been.
she’s been graceful and brave.
the quality of love changes
with this little being who’s come
from somewhere else
to expand our lives. time
changes too with the birth.
a child is an absorbent
concentration of time, is time itself.
both as metaphor and living fact.
it’s enough to say that
which was promised is now present;
and with her something has
mysteriously changed in the world.
breathing tastes different.
the nature and even the speed
of my dreams have altered.
about the joy itself i cannot speak,
for it defies me all about, being
mixed with many strange numinous
things, all magical, all greater
than the heart can translate.
something to do with realms
beyond, into which my
being has been interpolated,
head stuck in a furnace of the divine.
you expect it to burn,
but instead deep water
hallelujahs sound in
flowers and oracles.
one suddenly wanders
the earth aware that our
little life’s fringed
with the miraculous
unnamed, part darkness,
and part splendour.
all this is a way of saying that
i’m humbled and silent.
that half-smile silenced me.
half-smile at the gate of being.
only the rest of your life will
reveal what it means, what it was
you knew as you shot out
into the strange waters of life.
DANCE OF THE NEW BORN
– from warmth
– into the cold
– sprung
– hover
– mother, you?
– shiver
– can’t sleep
– can’t wake
– where am i?
– who am i?
– where is this?
– twitching
– stretching
– hold me
– feed me
– everything new
– being here
– staying here
– learning to see
– smells
– sounds
– that face, that face!
– helpless
– carried
– gravity
– being… loved
– okay, i’m here
– oh dear, i’m here
– i’m here
BALLET OF THE UNSEEN
For Charlotte Jarvis
ballet of the unseen gathers into itself
unseen suffering and the unseen joys.
the dance is unnoticed.
the indigo moods of women.
and the hidden tangents of growth.
lost dreams of street corners;
and the secret angles of trees.
movements lost in the long history of dance.
to celebrate the unseen poetry of movement is its hope.
the shift and dazzle of marketplaces;
the stillness of the temple where the goddess whirls;
the politics of the powerless who sing strength with their taut bodies.
and the electric arabesques of the prayers for truth…
it helps to have an anchor even if it’s symbolic.
dance hangs upon a thread of hope.
all that movement held by a gaze of love.
oh, to start a new dance across the world
choreographed by the spirit of integration
to dream of such liberation
is why i work with gravity and sunlight
and moonwind, and tidelift;
earthturn and relativity.
quantum motions.
notations of spirit.
footleaps and breath.
the way a dancer manages her fall
into gifts of freedom.
t
o write dance the way one writes poetry.
to write poetry the way one writes dance.
our motion and stillness.
our masks and our faces.
the thoughts you cannot think.
the dreams you cannot dream.
that which only a mask can see.
lost chlorophyll of feet walking across a field.
womb of the tree.
the dancer in meditation
before jagged lines of a twig.
the unseen dance in a dancer’s meditation.
the stillness of the mask that pulls a child across a field.
seasons in a garden with the trees still.
and the mask dreaming
and the footsteps retreating.
the playground of the world.
all our lives an infinite improvisation.
twirling and being reborn.
dying and then resurrecting
at the foot of the tree.
the single tree that spreads its branches in our souls.
the great world tree.
and the return
and the study
and the starting again
from first position.
SHAVED HEAD POEM
living in testing times.
most testing times in one
hundred years. pandemic
sweeping through our
world will wipe clean
pages of the human story.
nothing will be unchanged
in its wake. strikes at the core
of what it means to be human.
strikes at the heart
of culture and of civilisation.
culture depends on dialogue
and civilisation depends
on communality.
first time in the history
of the human we’re compelled
to survive on little
contact with each other.
it’s as if the earth, exhausted
with the monstrosities
of our deeds and follies has
pressed the reset button
on humanity by sending
us this nightmare.
for too long now
we’ve wallowed in excess.
we’ve wrought damage
on the world in a relentless
pursuit of wealth.
we’ve taken and taken
exhausted the teats
of mother earth
dried up the wells
of renewal
given ourselves over
to exploitation and to greed.
we’re like the children of israel
whom the prophets
found in orgies,
worshipping graven images.
we have refused to face
the dark truth that our civilisation
has become the greatest
threat to our civilisation.
we’ve become the very
worst enemies we have.
everything we did drove
us towards disaster.
if it hadn’t been this
catastrophe it would’ve
been another.
we’re overdue
an apocalypse. signs
are there in the culture.
we keep dreaming
about it, imagining it
in our novels,
poems, films, plays.
we’re haunted by
an impending apocalypse
because deep down
we know we deserve it,
deep down we know
that we’re racing
towards it with our deeds
and our dreams.
would it take a
true spiritual austerity
forced upon us to see
how bloated our
lives have become,
how empty, and how much
vanity and folly
we conceal from ourselves?
perhaps we travel too
much, polluting the skies
with restlessness
afraid to stay at home
quietly with those we
profess to love.
there’s no need for panic.
for awareness is calm,
acts beyond emotion.
we tend to ramp
up the negatives,
multiply things we fear.
disaster sells.
it’s a mysterious
thing about us
that we respond
much more to fear
than to goodness or love.
it’s a human flaw
we ought to
compensate for.
a virus has entered
our mental sphere.
the plague is everywhere
it’s in our dreams,
it’s on tv,
from it we can’t
be free.
it’s a real contagion
a mental contagion.
it’s destroying
us in nation after nation.
it’s in the air we breathe
it’s in the air we think.
a new contagion is needed
to fight the one that’s seized
our lives. we need a contagion
of courage, health and love.
we need a new
spiritual condition
to fight our fears
fight our panic.
we seldom talk about
a healthy mind
a brave spirit
in our times of crisis.
the mind has its powers
the spirit has its mysteries
its miracles which surprise
the certainties of science.
for times like this
awaken the miraculous
in us. we’re never more
ingenious than when we
act from solidarity.
we’ll survive our
latest armageddon.
but we’ll be marked
by how we got through it.
we will either be raised
by our courage
or degraded by our meanness.
here’s the moment
to rise to the true potential
of our strength,
wisdom, farsightedness.
not just whether
we survive; it’s also
who we become.
it’s not just how we are
in prosperity that reveals us.
it’s how we are when faced
with the ultimate test of all,
the test of death.
once a nation
during the great war rose
to the challenge
of character,
of destiny.
and her response
changed not only
herself but the world.
we’re at such a turning
point in human history.
it was always coming for us.
disaster was always
coming for us.
we’ve overdrawn
on the bank
of our futures.
it’s time to ask questions
that go all the way down
to the depths
of the meaning
of human life
the life of the species
the life of the earth.
our crisis is an opportunity
to change our destiny.
but the quality of that altering
depends on the best
lessons we take
from suffering.
sometimes we take
the worst lessons
from tragedy.
but we’re transformed
most by those who
learned the best ones.
what has happened to us?
our books, art, plays
were measured not
by their inspiration
or how deeply they spoke
to us in the cage
of the human
but by how much
they sold for, how
many copies
were bought,
or how many lowered
their behinds on
the hardened seats.
we lost our way.
we lost the track, the path,
the road, altogether,
and are deep in the land
of moral vacuity,
spiritual emptiness.
we have been listening
to only one loud voice,
that speaks with the power
of a worldwide megaphone,
voice of profit,
gods of success.
so rigged are the goalposts
of values that other voices
are not heard.
they don’t have great
social victories on their side
to prove universally strong
and persuasive. but does that
make them any less valuable?
voices that say they are
human too, and deserve
all the rights
of the human,
rights to health, to education,
to food, jobs, to raising
their families with dignity.
voices that speak
for climate crisis,
that speak not for raising
more walls but for a new
world co-operation.
we have entered the age
of disasters.
the age of narrowness
of heart is over. we
need to redirect our
values higher.
doctrines of hate
have nowhere to take us.
there’s no real destiny
for limited dreams anymore.
we could be at the verge
of a miraculous moment
in which we deliberately
choose and fight for
an upward curve
in our evolutionary
possibilities. but
imagine what could happen to
the world if this crisis
brought about genuine
enlightenment
in our leaders,
in the people,
and if we pressed for change
at a time when we are most
vulnerable to death?
we are in potential
myth-making times.
it’s time to make
a new myth for
humanity.
we could give birth
to a new kind of compassion,
new civic imagination,
new solidarity.
we’re up to it.
it’s why we fail so much,
fumble so much,
and keep clawing
our way back up,
keep moving the human
story further, through indirect,
circuitous ways. our
myths point in two
directions:
towards our fall,
towards our ascension.
that’s the highest
meaning of tragedy.
time to listen.