(for Philip Henry Jones)
From low land overflowing with treasures from plundered countries, from Jesus College which did not disown him, after the feasts of male intellectuals, with fettered feat and patterned plumage suggestive of the fine art of wax birthing bronze, and the haughty gaze of a memorial to a queen-mother, a cockerel flew home to Benin – it will be silent till dawn.
‘Dinggedicht: Ocwcor’
© copyright text and translation Mary Burdett-Jones 2022
Published in Y Traethodydd, Ionawr 2023, [5].
For the background to this poem, see James Crockford, ‘Contesting memorials’, and Kate Coghlan, ‘The repatriation of the Benin Bronze’ in Jesus College Cambridge Annual Report 2022, pp. 43-5 and 49-50