Death's Death Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(Lyric For Socrates)

(i)

Wait on the knoll. Seize not the field
that spins beyond light to gild
buds and flowers to beam by the edge
of a shore drifting through age.

Grab only sparks looming in the beige
of a horizon's drifting sky.

Dive into whorls where winds tie
fighting each other on a cloud's dye.

Drifting snail whorls creep,
as a bodies slip, mind walking off to sleep
through birdy gardens.

Through a tunnel's crooning silence
you do not know, hear only its sirens.

(ii)

The valley ibis swings off the cello
dragging a note beyond the stretchy silo,
the place sleeping mouths go
after a dose of hemlock swelling like dough.

Afterlife is the wave's mountain
on the island of a hidden fountain.
Wait in a canoe's oval bowl,
where heavy waves thin out to a shoal:

Here death dies, as earth
springs below your bed of birth.

And you scale up to a rock
by your sleeping bed's hearth
to rewind life's swinging clock.