There’s always an old man in every castle.
Sometimes, when he’s not the king’s physician,
he goes about collecting the king’s dues.
_
I belong under the king’s reign, in the storyteller’s house,
outside the great walls among those appealing for lesser taxes,
the ones not needed in the king’s armed service.
_
The king’s old man is making a round today;
and he stands at the door, asking for the bits—
thirty pieces of silver from Judas’ field—that make here a household.
_
There’s a horde of weariness on the street: the evicted folk,
grappling with uncertainty, like people escaping a battle through
an underground channel, imagining the fighting above them.
_
A child sitting on the mother’s thighs looks up to her:
Will it fester, his bile? Mother will it fester?
_
O child! I’d rather smother you
or my heart of furs and feathers.
_
People speak of a slow death, sores and the thick smell of an unwashed body.
But the king reigns over us, mighty, and after many years
climbs onto his bed and sleeps.
_
They speak in the morning, of a man who upset the life of many
and escaped into the arms of death; not with his physician by his side,
but with the cactus tree he groomed through his reign.
About the Author:
Ebenezer Agu is a poet and nonfiction writer. He grew up in the market city of Onitsha, Nigeria.
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