Poetry: The Journey of the Magi

December 10, 2023 – Los Angeles: Kunle Okesipe is a Nigerian poet and prize-winning playwright whose work has appeared in numerous publications and anthologies.

The Journey of the Magi

On our way to planting an orchard in Mars,
To turn its meteorites to cuisines for breakfast,
And gift the lilies of earth to woo its desert,
To lure its canyons back to the lineage of water,

Assailing us along the road, love letters from
a sect of sparrows,
With blurbs of feathers and bookmarks of tails,
Their prayers before the rains of acid, redolent
Like the ping-pong of sun rays before a vendor mirror.

In the little boneyard of eyes for the reveries of Eden,
And the geography of mind rutted by the wheel of reason,
We did not see, around us, a field of flame lily,
In its enclave of color, expending its capital of fire.

Amidst the prodigal flare of growing silence,
Along the whistling of antelopes that browsed their shadows,
Bonobos that scream their pleas, for the hood of undergrowth,

In the evening of our journey, the earth behind us,
Its seas awash with tales of dying fishes, its rivers in arms,
But we did not spare a sideway glance to see their fate,
On our way to courting the beauty of Mars.