WATERMARK BY CHIDOZIE OKONKWO

WATERMARKS
[The Poet’s Love]
I
dear,
are you the coy lady after my affections?
are my ways pleasing in your sight?
hold and hear my warning!
my love is corruptible;
cultic—
the spring bed of all ascending powers
bottled in transparent acrid dreams.
if you grow insistence upon your passion,
i must tell you what you’re up against.

II
when you settle for my love, i’d give you some of my youth.
with a lumbering gaiety, you shall have the abundant energies of a man entering into a new destiny.
when you sleep, my presence shall protect your nightspace,
and you shall ride mythic horses in your dreams.
my fantasies shall feed you, and you’d birth winged tigers of truth.
when you come into my love, you shall become your yearnings and more.
your world would be old with unalterable clannish power that would frighten even the gods.
you’ll understand the secret of one’s desires and protect them with fierce animals of the divine.
you’ll understand too, the mystery of births within births, deaths within births, and births within dying.
your dryness shall be covered with green moths that understand the transformative properties of fire.
and when evening stretches itself across the sky,
you’d alter the geography of my dreams and situate your soul in the cool flames of a flowered moonlight.
then it’d be easier to live in my love’s boundaries than to be free in infinity.

III
do you see young lady,
what my love can do to you;
what my feelings look like;
the texture and colour of my affections?
to love a poet—this is the meaning.
are you eager still,
for my love—the poet’s love?.

Chidozie Okonkwo.