Mystery of the Five Houses
I
At the house of light bulb,
there is fog.
The man with the child in his eyes
has a cat which sits daily on his lap,
gazing constantly at the big sky,
searching curiously for Peter Pan.
In the warm room,
the Lord of the Reedy River sleeps.
Under the ivy,
The handsome cabin boy sips
his cappuccetto grosso.
II
At the house of silence,
they pose riddles
that only the dead can answer.
The grave robbers
do the dance of the dogs
before unearthing secrets.
The wolf and the raven
play the peacemakers
in a debate over greed.
No evidence against the black sheep,
the alibi pans out,
and again the tomb becomes a womb
from which the fetus of truth is aborted.
The dead pity the living,
as slaves beg for the cadavers of other slaves.
III
At the house of leaves,
the roads fall out of the windows.
the decomposing trees make for bridges,
bridges over the gulf of ignorance.
The children of rain
join the roots to their school,
underground.
Their chlorophylls have been extracted,
they cannot carry out the photosynthesis of their existence.
IV
At the house of jealous lovers,
the keeper of storms
opens the floodgate,
and the rooms overflow
with the rage of angels.
The weather is an equation,
the weatherman altered the arithmetic,
and the victims of mathematics
are stranded.
There is no sailing away
on the ship within the bottle.
V
At the house of memory,
there is a shrine of madness.
Pieces of glass litter the floor,
there is a song on the lips
of the broken china.
The clock has lost its limbs,
no one remembers
the dance steps
to songs of the season;
the world is ill,
she suffers from future syndrome.
Dead children smile
from wind-kissed pictures.
There is a woman left brooding
upon the ledge,
it’s the gravedigger’s wife;
her lover is coming home tonight,
he is coming to attend his funeral.
Soonest Nathaniel is an award-winning poet from Nigeria. He is a scientist who believes that Albert Einstein would have had a greater impact on the world as an artist. His works have appeared in various local and international journals. In his spare time, you can find him listening to the music of the spheres, reading the stars, or trying to woo the moon.
