FLYING

Something in altitude kindles power-thirst

Mere horse-height suffices the emir

Bestowing from rich folds of the prodigious turban

Upon crawling peasants in the dust

Rare imperceptible nods enwrapped

In princely boredom.

 

I too have known

A parching of that primordial palate,

A quickening to manifest the life

Of a long recessive appetite.

Though strapped and manacled

That day I commanded from the pinnacle.

Of a three-tiered world a bridge befitting

The proud deranged deity I had become.

A magic rug of rushing clouds

Billowed and rubbed its white softness

Like practiced houri fingers on my soul,

And through filters of its gauzy fabric.

Revealed wonders of a metropolis,

Magic-struck to fairyland proportions.

By different adjustments of vision

I caused the clouds to float

Over a stilled landscape, over towers

And masts and smoke-plumed chimneys;

Or turned the very earth, unleashed

From itself, a roaming fugitive.

Beneath a constant sky. Then came

A sudden brightness over the world,

A rare winter’s smile it was, and printed

On my cloud carpet a black cross

Set in an orb of rainbows. To which

Splendid nativity came–who else would come.

But gray unsporting Reason, faithless

Pedant offering a bald refractory annunciation?

But oh what beauty! What speed!

A chariot of the night in panic flight.

From Our Royal Proclamation of the rites

Of day! And riding out Our procession

Of fantasy, We slaked an ancient

Vestigial greed shriveled by ages of dormancy

Till the eyes exhausted by glorious pageantries

Returned to rest on that puny

Legend of the life jacket stowed away

Of all places under my seat.

 

Now I think I know why gods

Are so partial to heights—to mountain

Tops and spires, too proud iroko trees

And thorn-guarded holy bombax,

Why petty household divinities

Will sooner perch on a rude board

Strung precariously from brittle rafters

Of a thatched roof than sit squarely

On safe earth.

                                                                   -CHINUA ACHEBE