(cover photograph direction: Victor Akhere)
Death is a certainty, & Father’s death adds muscle
to the conviction. Still, the thought of galloping
into oblivion in the next seconds is a nightmare.
A man paraded his new apartment in full regalia;
today he is a body enclosed in a shroud, balanced
in a sepulchre within the same apartment. A poet
says, Whatever dies, was not mixed equally. I wonder
what the missing item is — in the making of the
man, of my father and others ruptured into halves
by the storm Death is. I mean, what elements are
mismatched to mould man into a mixture, that
he is always on the brink of extinction? God knows
I can’t name them, meaning, I struggle with chemistry:
first, an atom is the smallest possible amount of matter;
later, the same atom consists of a nucleus surrounded by
electrons. Perhaps a nucleus is the smaller smallest; an
electron, the smallest smallest if the container, an atom,
is the smallest possible amount of matter. In Islamiya I’m
lessoned: every soul shall taste death, & that the first man,
Adam, was moulded with clay. I can see the logic in
lowering man underground at death — the beginning is
actually the end; timing is just an illusion: Man, at first,
unlived, then lived only to unlive. That’s Father’s cycle.
