'Mango seedling' by Chinua Achebe

The late Chinua Achebe dedicates this poem to the memory of Christopher Okigbo, dated May 1968

Through glass window paneUp a modern office blockI saw, two floors below, on wide-juttingConcrete canopy a mango seedling newly sproutedPurple, two-leafed, standing on its burstBlack yolk. It waved brightly to sun and windBetween rains—daily regaling itselfOn seed-yams, prodigally.For how long?How long the happy wavingFrom precipice of rainswept sarcophagus?How long the feast on remnant flourAt pot bottom?   Perhaps like the widowOf infinite faith it stood in waitFor the holy man of the forest, shaggy-hairedPowered for eternal replenishment.Or else it hoped for Old Tortoise’s miraculous feastOn one ever recurring dot of cocoyamSet in a large bowl of green vegetables—   These days beyond fable, beyond faith?   Then I saw itPoised in courageous impartialityBetween the primordial quarrel of EarthAnd Sky striving bravely to sink rootsInto objectivity, mid-air in stone.I thought the rain, prime moverTo this enterprise, someday would rise in powerAnd deliver its ward in delirious waterfallToward earth below. But every rainy dayLittle playful floods assembled on the slab,Danced, parted round its feet,United again, and passed.It went from purple to sickly greenBefore it died,   Today I see it still—Dry, wire-thin in sun and dust of the dry months—Headstone on tiny debris of passionate courage.