I opened my window at the bottom of the sea

By Elvis Gbanabom Hallowell, Freetown, Sierra Leone.

I opened my window at the bottom of the sea

To listen to those who speak of John Conteh-Morgan’s death

They speak of it in hendecasyllabic tones, of this man

Called John Conteh-Morgan; this man who himself listened

To the ranting of Vallejo, and stood on his head all his life

This man to whom the language of French sounded Italian

When this poem is published John Conteh-Morgan will

Show me the palms he took hot bread into

For the sake of my own belly which knew hunger

In linguistic energy.He will do this before he Celebrates

His own death in the parlor of my tears

Which itself is already holding the tears of other brothermen

It is painful to cry after other men have cried

Unless one has to do so in rooms meant for ...

My, I don’t even know how to see birds

Across the naked void of the sky, when all one needs to do

Is to say mother I have received the sun in the place of the moon

Even when the gods are still thinking about the voided moon

Let me hear it again, to know that it was John Conteh-Morgan

Who died without preparing our minds. Let us know what

Day he died, what season was it that deceived that day

Let us know why we ourselves didn’t die in the basic

Truth of his death. Let us follow up on the brutal energy

Of our own blindness that says to us the dead are asleep

And finally when the night comes upon me with its brutal

Memory of love, I want to clutch my travelling pair of sandals

And swallow my ego while celebrating your lugubrious silence

O shoes, you pair capable of taking me into your night

Into your own shadow, did the gods ask you to abide

To kill a man whose window already opens in the sea?