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A Fire in My Head

Page 5

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.

 

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