Ben Okri’s Wild is released today and his iconic poem Mental Fight reissued as an ebook. So to celebrate this is a sneak preview of Wild - and its title poem:
Wild
There’s a surprise at the end.
Everything should connect
With everything. The brain
Cools the blood, and the blood
Cools thought. Those ancients saw
The world as it is,
A system of co-operation,
Where things are both themselves
And symbols and correspondences.
Might it not be that a movement
Of paint here on plain wood
Is a retreat on a distant
Battlefield; or that a child
Moving counters on a blue
Tarpaulin is an upward curve
In the moment of a sleeping civilisation?
