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Incantation

Chris Abani

1966 –

What words can you wrap around

a dying brother, still dying, even now.

A man who has not eaten for a month

sips at water and says, even thirst is a gift.

He asks what other gifts God has given him.

I’m your gift, his daughter says from a corner.

And he smiles and rasps—

you can only unwrap a child once.

The rest is prayer and even more prayer.

You sing softly to him in a language

only the two of you speak and he

snores softly into your palm, breath and blood.

Chris Abani was born on December 27, 1966 in Afikpo, Nigeria, to a Nigerian father and an English mother. Abani fled Nigeria with his mother and four siblings in 1968 during the Biafran War (1967–70). The family moved to England for three years, then returned to Nigeria. Abani has lived in the U.S. since 2001.

Themes

About this Poem

“For the Ehugbo, how we die is as important as how we live, and to be allowed to sit in the presence of a dying brother is a rare privilege. To be graced with the chance to sing family across, to ease the journey, to make a love of dying, a grace of loss, is an incomparable gift. This is all.”
—Chris Abani

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More by this poet

The New Religion

The body is a nation I have never known.
The pure joy of air: the moment between leaping
from a cliff into the wall of blue below. Like that.
Or to feel the rub of tired lungs against skin-
covered bone, like a hand against the rough of bark.
Like that. “The body is a savage,” I said.
For years I said that: the body is a savage.

Chris Abani

2016

Poet of an Ordinary Heartbreak

Who hasn’t been tempted by the sharp edge of a knife?
An ordinary knife cutting ordinary tomatoes on
an ordinary slab of wood on an ordinary Wednesday.
The knife nicks, like a bite to the soul. A reminder
that what is contemplated is as real as the blood
sprouting from a finger. As real as a bruised eye.
Instead turn back to the meat stewing on the stove.
Scrape pulpy red flesh into the heat and turn.
Say: even this is a prayer. Even this.

Chris Abani

2015

Renewal [Excerpt]

I set you free that night, father.
When you came back in that yellow Volkswagen,
in that dream.
I made a boat of honor for you.
Woven of poems and words and not words.
I set it on the ocean.
Father Obuna said to me,
a gift is freely given and a gift
is freely returned.
It has taken me thirty years
to understand this.
Yemenya has your heart now.
May she be merciful.
May she love you.
The wound bleeds no more.
Which is to say,
what I have desired is like salt
left out all night and gone.

This is not a lamentation, damn it.
This is a love song.
This is a love song.
Like reggae—it all fall

Chris Abani

2010

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Incantation

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