The Death Of Something Big by AM Kamaal

For Àyìnlá Ọmọwúrà

Crying is the only beauty among sadness, sorrow,

Gratitude and joy. I saw metaphors, and imageries, dying

In the image of Àyìnlá Ọmọwúrà. I am as old as

Twenty years. I cried twenty years earlier

Beside the cruelty of God. I cried twenty years later

In between the grasp of my mother's joy.

I cried forty years later in the darkest part

Of my room, mourning the dead of beauties

In songs. Metaphors, and imageries are something big.

The death of a genius is a death of something big.

The death of something big is the birth

Of an inevitable replacement. People cry for deaths

Of something big. I cry for death of something big

That hurts. Breathing is as precious to beauty as sound

To songs. Death of metaphor is the death of a poem.

This morning, I see thousand stars glowing on the tongues

Of tens of these flutes, but the moon is the beauty

Of the nocturnal sky. Like a dead metaphors in a poem,

The death of the moon is another death of something big.

*Àyìnlá Ọmọwúrà was the leading musician of a western Nigerian genre of music called Àpàlà in the 1970's & 80's.

AM Kamaal is a Nigerian poet and writer. When he's not writing, he reads Ezra Pound, and Jericho Brown, listens to Àyìnlá Ọmọwúrà songs, and watches Hollywood.