Poem: Gabriel Okara: The Call of the River Nun

[Funmi Tofowomo Okelola]

The Call of the River Nun

I hear your call! 
I hear it far away; 
I hear it break the circle of these crouching hills.

I want to view your face again and feel your cold embrace; or at your brim to set myself and inhale your breath; 
or like the trees, 
to watch my mirrored self unfold and span my days with song from the lips of dawn.

I hear your lapping call! 
I hear it coming through; 
invoking the ghost of a child 
listening, where river birds hail your silver-surfaced flow.

My river's calling too! 
Its ceaseless flow impels 
my found'ring canoe down 
its inevitable course. 
And each dying year 
brings near the sea-bird call, 
the final call that 
stills the crested waves 
and breaks in two the curtain 
of silence of my upturned canoe.

O incomprehensible God! 
Shall my pilot be 
my inborn stars to that 
final call to Thee. 
O my river's complex course? 

By Gabriel Okara 

Bio:

Gabriel Okara, in full Gabriel Imomotimi Gbaingbain Okara   (born April 21, 1921, Bumodi, Nigeria), Nigerian poet and novelist whose verse had been translated into several languages by the early 1960s. (Encyclopedia Britannica)

Poetry: 

http://www.cafeafricana.com/Poetry.html

Funmi Tofowomo 
--The art of living and impermanence. 

[Chidi Anthony Opara]

Gabriel Okara
The grand songster.
We met,
We embraced,
The songs seeped.

-------CAO.


On 24 Jan, 04:49, Funmi Tofowomo Okelola <cafeafrica...@aol.com>
wrote: