Fable

by Emmanuel G G Yamba

Elephants wrestle elephants
until the field forgets its own breathing
above the broken gates of Monrovia.
 
The city seals its destruction.
I watch the first violence and see a child
lift a gun like a seer lifts a secret,
small hands gripping the cold metal
like Cain carrying a gift— 
a burning that never reaches the nostrils of God.
 
Remember, outside Noah’s ark,
a rainbow unfastened itself
from the wet throat of the sky,
and the dove returned
with a piece of field in its beak.
 
Even where bombs once fed,
the greenness insists on returning.
 
To know a city:  scrape rust from
its skin until the buried light begins to speak,
listen to the language beyond war in its bones.
 
Before the glittering of gold is the testimony of fire,
Monrovia has always been grinding, glowing.

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​Emmanuel G G Yamba is a Liberian writer and poet. A SprinNG, Ubwali and Obsidian Foundation Fellow 2025. His work has been featured or is forthcoming in A Long House, Poetry Journal, Pepper Coast Mag and elsewhere.