Half Deserted & Other Poems

Ismail Bala

Half Deserted

Dust fills the house

the windows always shut

so much life gone

nothing in these damp halls.

Your bedsheets rumpled

the mattress threadbare

there has been time

but your perfume is still here.

A husky musk

that pervades

after the rainstorm

the cold night air. 

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Croaky

(For Jackie Kay)

The voice of the croaky in the sand

was hoarse, filled with loss

like sand that never blows.

Hoof prints that the wind blew

over, an old love poem,

fiery, grit-tight, blast.

If you’d never set out

careening in the caramel, caramel sand,

you’d never be there now, wandering, lost.  

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Ismail Bala writes in English and Hausa. His poetry and translations have appeared in the UK, the USA, Canada, India and South Africa, in journals such as Poetry Review, Ambit, New Coin, Ake Review, Lunaris, A Review of International English Literature and Aura Literary Arts Review, among many others. Born and educated to university level in Kano, he did his post-graduate studies at Oxford. Line of Sight (2020) is his first collection. His poems have been translated into Latvian, Belarusian, Polish and Nepalese.  He is a Fellow of the International Writing Programme of the University of Iowa.