Ben Okri pens a poem for a portrait

 
18 September 2013

The National Portrait Gallery has commissioned novelist Ben Okri to write a poem to be displayed near the portrait of freed slave Diallo.

“Who can read the riddle of life/In this portrait of mine? I am one on whom providence/Has worked its magic reversals. Behind me are silent stories/Like a storm. I have worn History round my neck like chains. Freedom is a difficult lesson to learn. I have tasted the language of death/Till it became the water of life/ I have shaped a little my canvas of time. I have crossed seas of fires/And seen with these African eyes/The one light which neither empires/Nor all the might of men obscure. Man is the sickness, God the cure.”

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