I like to think of your silence as the love letters you will not write me,
as two sax solos from two ages across a stage, learning the languages
of kissing with your eyes closed. I like to think of you as a god
to whom I no longer pray, as a god I aspire to. I like the opening of your joined palms,
which is like an urn where my ashes find a home. The music of your lashes;
the silent way your body wears out mine.
Mostly, I like to think of you at night when a black screen of shining dust shines
from your mines to the edge of my skin, where you are a lamp of flutters.
I remember the spectral lashes–marigold, tamarind, secret thing between your thighs,
of closed kissing eyes. At night, the possibility of you is a heavy
sculpture of heavy bronze at the side of my bed,
a god. And I pray you into life. Into flesh.
Hello and welcome to Words That Burn, the podcast taking a closer look at poetry. How many feelings go through us when we’re missing the ones we love? How does that shape our perception of them? This week’s poem A Bronze God, or a Letter on Demand by Clifton Gachagua goes some way to answering those questions.
It is a poem of memory and longing, one that is unafraid to address the desire of love in all its forms.
Clifton Gachagua is a Kenyan born poet who consistently writes on the themes of intimacy and change both of which are neatly encompassed in this poem.
Even the title of the poem A Bronze God, or a Letter on Demand cannot seem to make up its mind on what it wants to be.
This poem comes from Clifton’s 2015 The Madman at Kilifi (Gachagua, 2014) , a poem that places the poet at the centre of Nairobi which acts as a microcosm of Kenya as a whole, right in the midst of its shifting and changing into a new place. He often places his poem’s speakers as a traveller of sorts observing such shifts. Speakers who seem to be constantly on a journey to the next point.
In the foreword to The Madman at Kilifi Kwame Dawes writes great praise for Gachagua’s poetry:
The Kenya of Clifton Gachagua is cosmopolitan. It is a world of cybercommunication, of cultures intersecting with each other, of existentialist
angst, of faiths, of multiple languages, of a swirl of ideas and anxieties,
of political intrigue and boredom. It is a world of youthful abandon,
of passion, of sexual ambivalence and willful ambiguity;...
In many ways, what we find in Gachagua is a poet’s articulation of the complexities of traditional culture and ultramodern realities that exist sometimes comfortably
with each other and at times in deep conflict on the continent of Africa. (Dawes 2014,)
That line, the complexities of traditional culture and ultramodern realities is a wonderful approach to take when looking at this poem.
The object of the speaker’s affection is all at once a divine being worthy of prayer; a construct of the old world. Yet at the same time; a modern jazz solo at two very different points in time. Just like his view of Nairobi, harnesses the contradiction of old and new to create a morphing fluctuating poem.
I think Clifton Gachagua writes some of the most evocative poetry I’ve ever read, it’s made clear in the first section of the poem:
I like to think of your silence as the love letters you will not write me,
as two sax solos from two ages across a stage, learning the languages
of kissing with your eyes closed.
The speaker begins in a moment of pure reflection: I like to think of your silence as the love letter you will not write me it is a striking line which leaves us wondering if the silence is used against the speaker or is it something else? As is typical for Gachagua there is nothing concrete in these lines. We are left unsure of a few things? Is the speaker’s object of desire with them as they are speaking or is this a reflection on a moment in the past?
Is the person being addressed unwilling to write the speaker love letters or are they not doing so simply because it's old fashioned. These moments of silence could be something the speaker enjoys but again we cannot be certain.
Clifton Gachagua is certainly a postmodernist (Adelokun 2021) and so his inclusion of jazz is fitting.
The two sax solos are born of the same things, but in radically different forms given the time that has passed between them, much like the speaker and this other. They are the same but communicating in very different ways. This could be a reference to the way in which some jazz musicians riff on previous players' songs. Often interpreting them in their own way, putting their own spin on them. (Devi 2014). I think it’s a beautiful metaphor for love, where we learn from the object of our affection, where desire informs our own growth, where we take small moments of another and interpret them making them our own.
The next line is our first hint that the poem is a much more present thing than initially assumed; learning the languages of kissing with your eyes closed. There is something of instinct and intimacy in these words, the moment we learn to trust those we are in love with , to allow our bodies to find each other. This poem is all about communication, or rather the ways we communicate without words. The speaker and the other are together and exploring one another, trusting each other.
Gachagua takes away much of the ambiguity around the speaker's feelings in the next section:
I like to think of you as a god
to whom I no longer pray, as a god I aspire to. I like the opening of your joined palms,
which is like an urn where my ashes find a home. The music of your lashes;
the silent way your body wears out mine
The reverence in these words rings clear as a bell and the speaker makes it clear how he views his other. They are deified. In the line to whom I no longer pray makes it clear that something, once again, has changed in the relationship between the pair. Once the speaker did pray to them, perhaps from a distance, almost as an object. Then, as with many faiths, there was very little intimacy between god and acolyte rather just reverence. Now though, things have shifted. The reverence has been eroded by experience and replaced by something better aspiration; as a go I aspire to.
In a sudden inversion of this god/ worshiper paradigm; it is the other who has their hands clasped in prayer; I like the opening of your joined palms which is like an urn where my ashes find a home.
This state of being reduced to ashes could be caused by any number of reasons. The speaker may be exhausted and reduced by the stress of day to day. Far more likely though, given the romantic nature of this poem is that the speaker is on fire with passion forever burning for his other.
That passionate reading is lent further credence by the lines that follow. There is the micro observation of the music of your lashes, our speaker is so close he can witness them, hear them make their own sound; it is pure intimacy. Ending the section is the line the silent way your body wears out mine. This is the ultimate intimacy and completely erotic, harking back to the notion of burning out to ashes. Their love is a consuming one.
If the first two sections define the relationship between the par then the next two define what happens in the absence of it. It is pure longing;
Mostly, I like to think of you at night when a black screen of shining dust shines
from your mines to the edge of my skin, where you are a lamp of flutters.
I remember the spectral lashes–marigold, tamarind, secret thing between your thighs,
of closed kissing eyes.
These are words of pure want, spilling from a mind that can think of little else than their desire.
There is something immediately erotically charged in the simple words mostly I think of you at night. What follows those words, is an image that I think belongs with the greatest of romantic writings; when a black screen of shining dust shines
from your mines to the edge of my skin, where you are a lamp of flutters.
This image is abstract in the extreme but somehow connects right with the core of me. There is something haunting and hopeful all at once. That black shining dust could be literal sand or glinting beads of sweat clung gently to the skin. Their longing for each other calling out across distance and absence.
The speaker’s reference to their other as a lamp of flutters is particularly beautiful. It invokes moth wings or butterflies like the ones in their stomach. The flutter like the glimpses and flashes of memory that make up the speakers idealized love, their god.
Those flutters of memory are then given sharp focus by the senses and listed off by the speaker. There is a beautiful flow from flutters to lashes, an action often associated with eyelashes. Scents dominate his memory marigold and tamarind. Full desire takes over and intimacy is the only thing we can think of as we read the words secret thing between your thighs. The instinct and trust returns once again in the closed kissing eyes.
This is a proclamation of devotion to a bronze god, one filled with longing and love. It is a testament to Gachagua's writing that so many glances and fragments of memory can be wound together in this beautiful thread. He achieves this through his mastery of imagery. Each one is striking and sticks in the mind. He is heavily influenced by the imagists and has been quite candid on this being his goal, he stated this in an interview in 2017:
‘’My early interest with poetry began with the imagists. With Pound. I read some kind of manifesto he’d written. I think because I’m a poet first I then became interested in movement and images. And economy mostly. Yes. Economy. Limited time. That’s what poems and films are in essence. Limited time to say something. ‘’ (Iduma 2017)
That economy Gachagua speaks of is what allows those abstract sensual images to flow so naturally. Before one is done another is slipping into place, a seamless construction of fragments. This flood of intangibility seems to give way in the final few lines. All those images move from liquid to bronze:
At night, the possibility of you is a heavy
sculpture of heavy bronze at the side of my bed,
a god. And I pray you into life. Into flesh.
Angst and faith literally intersect in these final lines as the speakers longing for the other give way to materialization. The speaker's worship of their missing love is so strong that the possibility of them begins to take solid form. I really enjoy the parallel to the myth of Pygmalion that Gachagua may, consciously or unconsciously, be drawing here. Pygmalion was the sculptor, who carved the perfect woman, then by praying to the gods,had life breathed into her. (Ovid, 2016). For Gachagua's speaker there is no middle man, his desire and want lead to direct creation; I pray you into life; into flesh.
Those final words are a perfect ending point for the poem, reaffirming the instinctual wanting that has coursed through the poem. They leave the reader in no doubt that the speaker, to this day, still lies in the dark burning for their love.
For me this is a poem that looks at romantic love as a whole, there is devotion in that kind of love and lust at the same time. It is not some idealized, almost pastoral form of love but rather it is a human one. Gachagua shows us a modern kind of love, the love letters you will not write me, are not because the other does not wish to send them but because the days of love letters are past. Despite that Gachagua shows us that the deep emotions that inspired such correspondence are very much alive and present.
This beautiful cascade of imagery creates a protagonist on fire. A speaker who burns for their beloved in the depths of the night. The poem is a living beating testament to the ways in which love can make us delirious with wanting, enough to transcend even reason itself.
References
Devi, Debra. 2014. “Language of the Blues: CUTTING CONTEST – American Blues Scene.” American Blues Scene. https://www.americanbluesscene.com/2014/01/language-of-the-blues-cutting-contest/.
Gachagua, Clifton, and Kwame Dawes. 2014. Madman at Kilifi. Nebraska: Nebraska Paperback.
Adelokun, Adetunji. 2021. “Aesthetics of Postmodernism in Clifton Gachagua’s Madman at Kilifi”. International Journal of Language and Literary Studies 3 (2):205-14. https://doi.org/10.36892/ijlls.v3i2.548.
Gachagua, Clifton, and Geoff Ryman. 2017. “Clifton Gachagua By Geoff Ryman.” Strange Horizons. http://strangehorizons.com/non-fiction/100african/clifton-gachagua/.
Iduma, Emmanuel. 2017. “A conversation with Clifton Gachagua.” Wasafiri Magazine. https://www.wasafiri.org/article/a-conversation-with-clifton-gachagua/.
Ovid. 2016. Metamorphoses. Translated by David Raeburn. London: Penguin Publishing Group.