On Reading "A Wedding in Hell" by Charles Simic
I'm sitting down to consider
God doesn't exist.
He is my one and only
unanswered question, if you ignore
wars, death and UFOs. and girls.
Dear heavenly justice, did you
come in on the big bang bus;
are you leaving with it? or did you
really drive that double-decker
layered into above-firmament
and below-firmament?
Simic arrives dripping a trail of black
blasphemous ink. I close my eyes
my ears. he is a biased man.
I am not. Dear Charles,
your talent is proof
that the zookeeper exists.
and the angels
that your mind refuses to let
go of. and the love of the lovers
who crowd your poetry, and the sun
and birds and pigs, and the hell
where weddings sometimes take place.
the hell is the proof of heaven.
Tolu Ogunlesi was born in 1982. He is the author of a collection of poetry Listen to the Geckos Singing From A Balcony, (Bewrite Books, UK, 2004). His fiction and poetry have appeared in Wasafiri, Sable, The Vocabula Review, Orbis, Eclectica, Stickman Review, VLQ, Inkpot, Mississippi Review, Times Arts Review, Smoke: A London Peculiar, Sentinel Poetry Quarterly, Camouflage, Pindeldyboz, Dance the Guns to Silence and Subtle Tea among others, and are forthcoming in Jelly Paint and The Weaverbird Anthology of New Nigerian Fiction. He currently works with a management consulting firm in Lagos, Nigeria. (tolu.ogunlesi@gmail.com)