once, did I hear mother speak
again in their little disputes once
he'd said it. From then began
my long unrest: what was this
Thing so unanswerable and why
was it dogged by that
relentless Other? My mother
proved no help at all nor did
my father whose sole reply
was just a solemn smile…. Quietly
later of its own will it showed
its face, so slowly, to me though
not before they'd long been dead—my
little old man and my mother
also—and showed me too how
utterly vain my private quest
had been. Flushed by success
I spoke one day in a trifling
row: you see, my darling (to
my wife) where Something
stands—no matter what—there
Something Else will take its
stand. I knew, she said; she
pouted her lips like a gun
in my face. She knew, she said,
she'd known all along of that
other woman I was keeping in town.
And I fear, my friends,
I am yet to hear
the last of it.
Knowing Robs Us
Knowing robs us of wonder.
Had it not ripped apart
the fearful robes of primordial Night
to steal the design that crafted horns
on doghead and sowed insurrection
overnight in the homely beak
of a hen; had reason not given us
assurance that day will daily break
and the sun's array return to disarm
night's fantastic figurations—
each daybreak
would be garlanded at the city gate
and escorted with royal drums
to a stupendous festival
of an amazed world.
One day
after the passage of a dark April storm
ecstatic birds followed its furrows
sowing songs of daybreak though the time
was now past noon, their sparkling
notes sprouting green incantations
everywhere to free the world
from harmattan death.
But for me
the celebration is make-believe;
the clamorous change of season
will darken the hills of Nsukka
for an hour or two when it comes;
no hurricane will hit my sky—
and no song of deliverance.
Bull and Egret
At seventy miles an hour
one morning down the seesaw
road to Nsukka I came
upon a mighty bull
in form and carriage
so unlike Fulani cattle—
gaunt, high-horned, triangular
faced—that come in herded
multitudes from dusty savannas
to the north…. Heavy
was he, solitary dark
and taciturn, one of a tribe
they say fate has chosen
for slow extinction. At his heels
paced his egret, intent
praise-singer, pure white
all neck, walking high
stilts and yet no higher
than his master's leg joint….
Odd covetousness indeed would
leave its boundless green estates
for a spell of petty trespassing
on perilous asphalt laid for me…. My
frantic blast of iron voice
shattered their stately march, then
recoiled brutally to my heart
as he gathered in hasty panic
the heaviness of his hind
quarters, so ungainly in his
hurry, and flung it desperate
beyond my monstrous
reach. I should have felt unworthy then
playing such pranks on the noble
elder and watching his hallowed
waist cloth came undone had not
his singer fared so well…. Two
quick hops, a flap of
wings and he was
safe posture intact on
brown laterite…. I could not
bear him playing so
faithfully my faithless agility-man, my
scrambler to safety, throat dilated
still by remnant praises
of his excellency high-headed
in delusion marching now alone
into death's ambush…. We were
spared, the bull and I, in our separate follies….
His routed sunrise procession
no doubt would reform beyond the clamor
of my passage and sprightly
egret take up again
his broken adulation
of the bull, his everlasting
prince, his giver-in-abundance
of heavenly cattle ticks.
Lazarus
We know the breathtaking
joy of his sisters when the word
spread: He is risen! But a
man who has lived a full life
will have others to
reckon with beside his
sisters. Certainly that keen-eyed
assistant who has moved up
to his table at the office, for
him resurrection is an awful
embarrassment…. The luckless
people of Ogbaku knew its
terrors that day the twin-headed
evil strode their highway. It
could not have been easy
picking up again the blood-spattered
clubs they had cast away; or to
turn from the battered body
of the barrister lying beside his
battered limousine to finish off
their own man, stirring now suddenly
in wide-eyed resurrection…. How well
they understood, those grim-faced
villagers wielding their crimson
weapons once more, how well
they understood that at the hour
of his rising their kinsman
avenged in murder would turn
away from them in obedience
to other fraternities, would turn indeed
their own accuser and in one
breath obliterate their plea
and justification! So they killed
him a second time that day on the
threshold of a promising resurrection.
Vultures
In the grayness
and drizzle of one despondent
dawn unstirred by harbingers
of sunbreak a vulture
perching high on broken
bone of a dead tree
nestled close to his
mate his smooth
bashed-in head, a pebble
on a stem rooted in
a dump of gross
feathers, inclined affectionately
to hers. Yesterday they picked
the eyes of a swollen
corpse in a waterlogged
trench and ate the
things in its bowel. Full
gorged they chose their roost
keeping the hollowed remnant
in easy range of cold
telescopic eyes….
Strange
indeed how love in other
ways so particular
will pick a corner
in that charnel house
tidy it and coil up there, perhaps
even fall asleep—her face
turned to the wall!
… Thus the Commandant at Belsen
Camp going home for
the day with fumes of
human roast clinging
rebelliously to his hairy
nostrils will stop
at the wayside sweetshop
and pick
up a chocolate
for his tender offspring
waiting at home for Daddy's
return….
Praise bounteous
providence if you will
that grants even an ogre
its glowworm
tenderness encapsulated
in icy caverns of a cruel
heart or else despair
for in the very germ
of that kindred love is
lodged the perpetuity
of evil.
Public Execution in Pictures
The caption did not overlook
the smart attire of the squad. Certainly
there was impressive swagger in that
ready, high-elbowed stance; belted
and sashed in threaded dragon teeth
they waited in self-imposed restraint—
fine ornament on power unassailable—
for their cue
at the crucial time
this pretty close-up lady in fine lace
proved unequal to it, her first no doubt,
and quickly turned away But not
this other—her face, rigid
in pain, firmly held between her palms;
though not perfect yet, it seems
clear she has put the worst
behind her today
in my home
far from the crowded live-show
on the hot, bleached sands of Victoria
Beach my little kids will crowd
round our Sunday paper and debate
hotly why the heads of dead
robbers always slump forward
or sideways.
Gods, Men, and Others
Penalty of Godhead
The old man's bed
of straw caught a flame blown
from overnight logs by harmattan's
incendiary breath. Defying his age and
sickness he rose and steered himself
smoke-blind to safety.
A nimble rat appeared at the
door of his hole looked quickly to left and
right and scurried across the floor
to nearby farmlands.
Even roaches that grim
tenantry that nothing discourages
fled their crevices that day on wings they
only use in deadly haste.
ousehold gods alone
frozen in ritual black with blood
of endless tribute festooned in feathers
perished in the blazing pyre
of that hut.
Those Gods Are Children
(for Gabriel Okara)
No man who loves himself
will dare to drink
before his fathers' presences enshrined
by the threshold have drunk
their fill. A fool alone will
contest the precedence of ancestors
and gods; the wise wisely
sing them grandiloquent lullabies
knowing they are children
those omnipotent deities.
Take that avid-eyed old man
full horn in veined hand
unsteadied by age who calls
forward his fathers tilting the horn
with amazing skill for a hand
so tremulous till grudging trickles
break through white froth
at the brim and course down
the curved side to fine point
of sacrifice ant-hole-size in earth:
come together all-powerful spirits
and drink; no need to scramble
there's enough for all!
Or when the offering of yams
is due who sends the lively
errand son to scour the barn
and bring a sacrifice fit
for the mighty dead! Naive
eager to excel the child
returns in sweat lumbering
the heavy pride of his father's harvest:
ignorant child, all ears and no eyes!
is that the biggest in my barn?
I said the biggest!
Only then does the nimble child
perceive a surreptitious fist quickly shown
and withdrawn again—and break through
wisdom's lashing cordon to welcoming smiles
of initiation. He makes the journey
of the neophyte to bring home a ritual
offering as big as an egg.
II
Long ago a man of fury drawn
by doom's insistent call slew
his brother. The land and every deity
screamed revenge: a head for a head
and raised their spear
to smite the town should it
withhold the due. The man
was ready. The elders' council
looked at him and turned
from him to all the orphans doubly
doomed and shook their heads:
the gods are right and just! This man
shall hang but first may he
retrieve the sagging house
of his fathers
and the fine points
of the gods' spears
returned to earth
and he lived for years that man
of death he raised his orphans
he worked his homestead and his farmlands
till evening came and laid him low
with cruel foraging fever. Patient
elders peering through the hut's dim
light darkened more by smoke
of smoldering fire under his bed
steady-eyed at a guilt they had stalked
across scrublands and seven rivers, a long-prepared
hangman's loop in their hand
quickly circled his neck
as he died
and the gods
and ancestors
were satisfied.
III
They are strong and to be feared
they make the mighty crash
in ruin like iroko's fall
at height of noon scattering
nests and frantic birdsong
in damped silence of deep
undergrowth. Yet they are fooled
as easily as children those deities
their simple omnipotence
drowsed by praise.
Lament of the Sacred Python
I was there when lizards
were ones and twos, child
Of ancient river god Idemili. Painful
Teardrops of Sky's first weeping
Drew my spots. Sky-born
I walked the earth with royal gait
And crowds of human mourners
Filing down funereal paths
Across lengthening shadows
Of the dead acknowledged my face
In broken dirges of fear.
But of late
A wandering god pursued,
It seems, by hideous things
He did at home has come to us
And pitched his tent here
Beneath the people's holy tree
And hoisted from its pinnacle
A charlatan bell that calls
Unknown monotones of revolts,
Scandals, and false immunities.
And I that none before could meet except
In fear though I brought no terrors
From creation's day of gifts I must now
Turn on my track
In dishonorable flight
Where children stop their play
To shriek in my ringing ears:
Look out, python! Look out, python!
Christians relish python flesh!
And mighty god Idemili
That once upheld from earth foundations
Cloud banks of sky's endless waters
Is betrayed in his shrine by empty men
Suborned with the stranger's tawdry gifts
And taken trussed up to the altar-shrine turned
Slaughterhouse for the gory advent
Feast of an errant cannibal god
Tooth-filed to eat his fellows.
And the sky recedes in
Disgust; the orphan snake
Abandoned weeps in the shadows.
Their Idiot Song
These fellows, the old pagan
said, surely are out of their mind—
that old proudly impervious
derelict skirted long ago by floodwaters
of salvation: Behold the great
and gory handiwork of Death displayed
for all on dazzling sheets this
hour of day its twin nostrils
plugged firmly with stoppers of wool
and they ask of him: Where
is thy sting?
Sing on, good fellows, sing
on! Someday when it is you
he decks out on his great
iron bed with cotton wool
for your breath, his massing odors
mocking your pitiful makeshift defenses
of face powder and township ladies' lascivious
scent, these others roaming
yet his roomy chicken coop will
be singing and asking still
but YOU by then
no longer will be
in doubt!
The Nigerian Census
I will not mourn with you
your lost populations, the silent columns
of your fief erased
from the king's book of numbers
For in your house of stone
by the great road
you listened once to refugee voices
at dawn telling of massacres and plagues
in their land across seven rivers
Like a hornbill in flight
you tucked in your slippered feet
from the threshold
out of their beseeching gaze
But pestilence farther
than faraway tales of dawn
had bought a seat in Ogun's reckless
chariot and knocks by nightfall
on your iron gate.
Take heart oh chief; decimation
by miscount, however grievous,
is a happy retreat from bolder
uses of the past. Take heart,
for these scribal flourishes
behind smudged entries, these
trophied returns of clerical headhunters
can never match the quiet flow
of red blood.
But if my grudging comfort fail,
then take this long and even view to A.D. 2010
when the word is due to go out again
and—depending on which Caesar
orders the count—new conurbations