The Half-God of Rainfall. Inua Ellams
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4th Estate
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This eBook first published in Great Britain by 4th Estate in 2019
Copyright © Inua Ellams 2019
Cover design by Jack Smyth
Inua Ellams asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
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Source ISBN: 9780008324773
Ebook Edition © April 2019 ISBN: 9780008324780
Version: 2019-03-12
For Veronica Ellams, Mariam Asuquo, Hadiza Alex Ellams, Claire Trévien, Annabel Stapleton Crittendon, Imogen Butler Cole, Joelle Taylor and Michaela Coel.
In solidarity with women who have spoken against or stood up to male abuses of power in all its forms.
I’m a poet so I can empathise with minor gods
– Chuma Nwokolo
The first madness was that we were born,
that they stuffed a god into a bag of skin
– Akwaeke Emezi
I, too, once dribbled that old bubble, happiness,
and found in time the scramble and the rules
doubtful
– W Belvin
I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide,
welling and swelling I bear in the tide
– Maya Angelou
Contents
Portrait of Prometheus
as a basketball player.
His layup will start from mountains
not with landslide, rumble or gorgon clash
of titans, but as shadow-fall across stream –
some thief-in-the-night-black-Christ-
type stealth. In the nights before this,
his name, whispered in small circles, muttered
by demigods and goddesses, spread rebellious,
rough on the tongues of whores and queens,
pillows pressed between thighs, moaning.
Men will call him father, son or king
of the court. His stride will ripple oceans,
feet whip-crack quick, his back will scar,
hunched over, a silent storm about him.
Both hands scorched and bleeding;
You see nothing but sparks splash off
his palms, nothing but breeze beneath
his shuck ’n’ jive towards the basket
carved of darkness, net of soil and stars.
Fearing nothing of passing from legend to myth
he fakes left, crossover, dribbles down
the line and then soars – an eagle chained
to hang time.
– Inua Ellams