Gnosis
by and published in Edition Eight of Pomegranate
‘It is possible for you to reach it but you will grieve a great deal’
Imagine the husk of a man who knows
his son will die before the week is out.
You ask him why he sings; no doubt baffled
by the faith it takes to open the most
clenched fist of a heart, make a bloom of gently
insistent beauty. This is when your own
new-sprung bloom would shut itself again;
afraid that get-well cards are only empty
measures of sentiment, the weight of a word.
You are sorry with no answer to this obscene
riddle of a stubble headed boy whose scream
fissures this night ward watched by a just lord
who will not intervene (for all this man drops
his head to find the tune that, even now, isn’t lost).
Kayo Chingonyi
Kayo Chingonyi read English Literature at the University of Sheffield. As a student he was co-founder of a successful literary event series called ‘Word Life’. Now based in London, he performs regularly across the country and has been published in Tate Etc, Holy Ghost, Now Then, The Shuffle Anthology 2009 and City Lighthouse (tall-lighthouse, 2009).