Four Poems |  John Chinaka Onyeche

OUR CAGED JOY FLEW AWAY

In Memory of Miss Christabel Jay Sabo, 12th October 2024

Today I held water,
But with a basket.

Is it not a miracle,
That we beget offspring?

Here, our rejoices are full,
Growing into abounding bliss.

Watching the rose bloom,
Tenderly, a beauty to behold.

I am left with perturbation,
Wishing to hold words.

To say, the heaviness,
My heart is letting,

Ever since the news was broken,
How the water evaporated.

Is this, too, a miracle?
No, I doubt what being does this;

How with all our balmy hands,
Still, it robbed us.

Your tender smiles at home,
Now missed – Dear Christabel,

Is this, too, a miracle?
I doubt it, no gods does that.

Words can’t fail me again,
For here, I am bereaved.

BEFORE CONVOKING

For Late Uncle Kelechi Nwuzi 2022

I don’t know with what garments
to clothe my grief this morning
as no garment is good enough
to shroud my scars from this stormy aches.
& I am here staring at your portrait
wishing that time reverses itself –
perhaps I would be in your office
to break this news that I heeded your advice
that on the 26th of April
I will be convoking
I mean, how does grief fiends its hands
over what we consider ours
in this little space called earth & her life?
I am looking for the space
where life stole your breath of fresh air –
handing you stillness
where everyone stood by your graveside
& wailed storms –
How do we even die without knowing?
If tears were the penance for death
I am willing to empty the Nile for your sake –
You who sat me down & spoke life
into the little spark of a broken child –
a broken boy –
a brokenness that echoes into nightmares –
why are our lives vanishing within a twinkling of eyes?

ELEGY

For Emma’s Father, 30th Sept, 2024

My world crumbled again.
My words scattered amidst the news,
holding nothing to express the vacuum.
I watched it happen;
I stare as birds pick them up.
Words after word left my thoughts,
one after another,
another after one.
To fix a father’s absence
is like fixing a broken glass;
it leaves you with a trace
as one on whose shoulder
Is saddled father’s clothing
and father’s shadows rest onwards.
I found no words to elegize
your demise in the Harmattan season.
This breeze blinding with chill,
while no clothing for what is remaining.
I elegize for this sun set too soon.
The water is still holding a mist –
where and how should we find you?
When and what should we do now?
This and that are the words left
in our tongues as we grieve.

PEACE

I know, these words fail me,
A thousand times and one time,
they fail to hold me and behold them
together in my prayers—
such that I have longed for,
something within my heart chips in.
The son I had wished to beget,
a daughter who barely calls my name
or beholds my face in remembrance.
If chances should be, or
I should relate this with you—about
a baby born while our cord is broken
without mending, in August,
where the baby lays bare.
My thoughts, tinted black,
stained clothes, a soliloquy of abandonment.
Fist fastened to separate home,
family, and a child’s pride;
the absence of a fatherhood.
Some days, I just walk into a column of words
and baptize myself in them,
seeking to trace my tracks back
into a cocoon—innocent as a boy
without any sense of betrayal,
for a child who growls,
searching for a father whose shoulder
he can’t cry or lean on.
For a bridge has been built across
the portrait—home, family, or fatherhood.