The Executioner's Dream - Kwesi Brew

I dreamt i saw an eye, a pretty eye

In your hands

Glittering, wet and sikening

Like a dull onyx set in a crown of thorns

I did not know you were dead

When you dropped it in my lap

What horrors of human sacrifice

Have you seen, executioner?

What agonies of tortured men

Who sat through nights and nights of pain

Tongue-tied by the wicked sappor

Gazing at you with hot imploring eyes?

Those white lilies tossed their little heads then

In the moon-steeped ponds;

There was bouncing gaiety in the crisp chirping of the cricket in the undergrowth

And as the surf-boats splintered the waves

I saw the rainbow in your eyes

And in the flash of your teeth

As each crystal shone,

I saw sitting hand in hand with melancholy

A little sunny child

Playing at the marbles with husks of fallen stars:

Horrors were your flowers then;

The blood-bright bougainvilleas,

They delighted you. 

Why do you weep

And offer me this little gift

Of a dull onyx set in a crown of thorns?

---

Kwesi Brew (1928 - 2007) Ghana

Source: All Poetry