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Chinua Achebe Collected Poems Chinua Achebe was born in Nigeria in . He was raised in the large village of Ogidi, one of the first centers of Anglican missionary work in eastern Nigeria, and is a graduate of University College, Ibadan. His early career in radio ended abruptly in , when he left his post as director of external broadcasting in Nigeria during the national upheaval that led to the Biafran War. He was appointed senior research fellow at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, and began lecturing widely abroad. From to , and again from to , Mr. Achebe was professor of English at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and also for one year at the University of Connecticut, Storrs. Cited in the London Sunday Times as one of the “, Makers of the Twentieth Century” for defining “a modern African literature that was truly African” and thereby making “a major contribution to world literature,” Chinua Achebe has published novels, short stories, essays, and children’s books. His volume of poetry Christmas in Biafra and Other Poems, written during the Biafran War, was the joint winner of the first Commonwealth Poetry Prize. Of his novels, Arrow of God won the New Statesman–Jock Campbell Award, and Anthills of the Savannah was a finalist for the Booker Prize. Mr. Achebe has received numerous honors from around the world, including the Honorary Fellowship of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and Foreign Honorary Membership of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, as well as more than thirty honorary doctorates from universities in England, Scotland, the United States, Canada, Nigeria, and South Africa. He is also the recipient of Nigeria’s highest honor for intellectual achievement, the Nigerian National Order of Merit, and of Germany’s Friedenpreis des Deutschen Buchhandels for . Mr. Achebe lives with his wife in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, where they teach at Bard College. They have four children and three grandchildren.
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Also by Chinua Achebe
Anthills of the Savannah The Sacrificial Egg and Other Stories Things Fall Apart No Longer at Ease Chike and the River A Man of the People Arrow of God Girls at War and Other Stories Christmas in Biafra and Other Poems Beware Soul Brother Morning Yet on Creation Day The Trouble with Nigeria The Flute The Drum Hopes and Impediments How the Leopard Got His Claws (with John Iroaganachi) Winds of Change: Modern Short Stories from Black Africa (with others) African Short Stories (editor, with C. L. Innes) Another Africa (with Robert Lyons) Home and Exile
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Collected Poems Chinua Achebe
Anchor Books a division of random house, inc. new york
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an anchor books orig inal, august 20 04 Copyright © 1971, 1973, 2004 by Chinua Achebe All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Anchor Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. Anchor Books and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc. The poem “Mango Seedling” was first published in The New York Review of Books in and was dedicated to the memory of the poet Christopher Okigbo. “Those Gods Are Children” first appeared in somewhat different form in The Conch, “Love Song (for Anna)” in Zuka, “Their Idiot Song” in Transition, “Knowing Robs Us” and “The Nigerian Census” in Callaloo, and “Flying,” “Agostinho Neto,” and “Pine Tree in Spring” in Agni. A good number of the others have appeared in Okike: An African Journal of New Writing and in Christmas in Biafra and Other Poems. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Achebe, Chinua. [Poems] Collected poems / Chinua Achebe. p. cm. ISBN --- (pbk.) . Nigeria—Poetry. I. Title. PR..AA '.—dc Book design by Rebecca Aidlin www.anchorbooks.com Printed in the United States of America
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To the Memory of My Mother
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Contents
In Lieu of a Preface: A Parable
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1966 Benin Road Mango Seedling Pine Tree in Spring The Explorer Agostinho Neto
Prologue
Poems About War The First Shot A Mother in a Refugee Camp Christmas in Biafra (1969) Air Raid Biafra, 1969 An “If” of History Remembrance Day A Wake for Okigbo After a War
Poems Not About War Love Song ( for Anna) Love Cycle
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conte nts
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Question Answer Beware, Soul Brother NON-commitment Generation Gap Misunderstanding Knowing Robs Us Bull and Egret Lazarus Vultures Public Execution in Pictures Gods, Men, and Others Penalty of Godhead Those Gods Are Children Lament of the Sacred Python Their Idiot Song The Nigerian Census Flying
Epilogue He Loves Me; He Loves Me Not Dereliction We Laughed at Him
Notes
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In Lieu of a Preface: A Parable
The Author had begun to worry about his own conduct. Perhaps he had not been fair to his poems. Yes, the same poetry that had surged from the depths to bring pain-soaked solace in the breach and darkness of civil war. Now he had stepped out alone into the light. Everyone knows, of course, that an author cannot possibly bring things to such a pass unaided. He had plenty of help from his then Publisher, who filled the role of primary culprit, leaving the Author with the guilt only of acquiescence and quietude. For, in truth, the Author had raised the matter of his poems now and again with the Publisher, aloof in his towers and battlements in distant London, unready for strange images and cadences; and his reply had always been a telegraphic non sequitur: We do very well with your novels, you know. In time the poems, like all children reared in hardship, grew tougher and wiser than their peers. They figured out that as offspring of a heedless parent they were fated to find their own way in the world. Their unguided wandering before long brought them face-to-face with a magician, Negative Capability, the holy man of the forest, shaggy-haired powered for eternal replenishment, alias Man Pass Man; and he blessed their struggle. They went out early one morning in search of validation and returned at nightfall singing and dancing and bearing aloft the trophy of Commonwealth Poetry. A few ripples, but no
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waves. They contrived something breathtakingly audacious: they got Her Britannic Majesty to invoke six of their lines to end a royal admonition to her Commonwealth in crisis. Remember also your children for they in their time . . . More ripples, but hardly any waves. If the Publisher heard any of it he kept the news to himself, and kept also his blurb on the book of poems in which he absentmindedly praised the novels. What happened next is not very clear, though there is no lack of speculation. The one certain fact, however, is that the poems went silent. Did they go underground, as one rather romantic commentator would have it, to cultivate a secret guild of readers? Nobody can really say. The Author does recall, however, that at about this time he had begun to observe increasing numbers of intense-looking men and women in his audiences who would go up to the dais at the end of a reading and ask—or even demand—to know where to find the book he read from. An American photographer with a fine portfolio of African material came on the scene at this time with a request to the Author for collaboration. So impressed was the Author by the photographs that he readily agreed to contribute to a catalog of their exhibition, and became joint author of a magnificent coffee-table book with the beguiling title of Another Africa. In his enthusiasm he found himself traveling across the United States to Seattle and Portland, Oregon, to read and speak at the exhibition. And then things took a sudden, unexpected turn. The Author received an urgent call from a lady who identified herself as Curator of Another Africa exhibition, now showing in a major museum in the Midwest, in a city that had better remain nameless. She wanted to know from the Author how she might get hold of his book of poems in a hurry. x
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- Why in a hurry? - Because visitors to the exhibition are taking away your poems from the catalog. - Taking away my poems, how? - Ripping them out. And carrying them away. - My gentle readers? Oh, dear! - What’s that? - Never mind. The Author has at last found a new Publisher who, unaware of these events, has set about publishing his collected poems. The Author, suitably chastened, is dreaming of a new day when peace will return to the affair of books, to wit: writing, publishing, and reading.
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Prologue
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1966
absentminded our thoughtless days sat at dire controls and played indolently slowly downward in remote subterranean shaft a diamond-tipped drill point crept closer to residual chaos to rare artesian hatred that once squirted warm blood in God’s face confirming His first disappointment in Eden Nsukka, November 19, 1971
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Benin Road
Speed is violence Power is violence Weight violence The butterfly seeks safety in lightness In weightless, undulating flight But at a crossroads where mottled light From old trees falls on a brash new highway Our separate errands collide I come power-packed for two And the gentle butterfly offers Itself in bright yellow sacrifice Upon my hard silicon shield.
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Mango Seedling
Through glass windowpane Up a modern office block I saw, two floors below, on wide-jutting concrete canopy a mango seedling newly sprouted Purple, two-leafed, standing on its burst Black yolk. It waved brightly to sun and wind Between rains—daily regaling itself On seed yams, prodigally. For how long? How long the happy waving From precipice of rainswept sarcophagus? How long the feast on remnant flour At pot bottom? Perhaps like the widow Of infinite faith it stood in wait For the holy man of the forest, shaggy-haired Powered for eternal replenishment. Or else it hoped for Old Tortoise’s miraculous feast On one ever recurring dot of cocoyam Set in a large bowl of green vegetables— This day beyond fable, beyond faith? Then I saw it Poised in courageous impartiality Between the primordial quarrel of Earth
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And Sky striving bravely to sink roots Into objectivity, midair in stone. I thought the rain, prime mover To this enterprise, someday would rise in power And deliver its ward in delirious waterfall Toward earth below. But every rainy day Little playful floods assembled on the slab, Danced, parted round its feet, United again, and passed. It went from purple to sickly green Before it died. Today I see it still— Dry, wire-thin in sun and dust of the dry months— Headstone on tiny debris of passionate courage. Aba, 1968
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Pine Tree in Spring ( for Leon Damas)
Pine tree flag bearer of green memory across the breach of a desolate hour Loyal tree that stood guard alone in austere emeraldry over Nature’s recumbent standard Pine tree lost now in the shade of traitors decked out flamboyantly marching back unabashed to the colors they betrayed Fine tree erect and trustworthy what school can teach me your silent, stubborn fidelity?
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The Explorer
Like a dawn unheralded at midnight it opened abruptly before me—a rough circular clearing, high cliffs of deep forest guarding it in amber-tinted spell A long journey’s end it was though how long and from where seemed unclear, unimportant; one fact alone mattered now—that body so well preserved which on seeing I knew had brought me there The circumstance of death was vague but a floating hint pointed to a disaster in the air elusively But where, if so, the litter of violent wreckage? That rough-edged gypsum trough bearing it like a dead chrysalis reposing till now in full encapsulation was broken by a cool hand for this lying in state. All else was in order except the leg missing neatly at knee joint
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even the white schoolboy dress immaculate in the thin yellow light; the face in particular was perfect having caught nor fear nor agony at the fatal moment. Clear-sighted with a clarity rarely encountered in dreams my Explorer-Self stood a little distant but somewhat fulfilled; behind him a long misty quest: unanswered questions put to sleep needing no longer to be raised. Enough in that trapped silence of a freak dawn to come face-to-face suddenly with a body I didn’t even know I lost.
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Agostinho Neto
Neto, were you no more Than the middle one favored by fortune In children’s riddle; Kwame Striding ahead to accost Demons; behind you a laggard third As yet unnamed, of twisted fingers? No! Your secure strides Were hard earned. Your feet Learned their fierce balance In violent slopes of humiliation; Your delicate hands, patiently Groomed for finest incisions, Were commandeered brusquely to kill, Your melodious voice to battle cry. Perhaps your family and friends Knew a merry flash cracking the gloom We see in pictures but I prefer And will keep the darker legend. For I have seen how Half a millennium of alien rape And murder can stamp a smile On the vacant face of the fool,
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The sinister grin of Africa’s idiot-kings Who oversee in obscene palaces of gold The butchery of their own people. Neto, I sing your passing, I, Timid requisitioner of your vast Armory’s most congenial supply. What shall I sing? A dirge answering The gloom? No, I will sing tearful songs Of joy; I will celebrate The Man who rode a trinity Of awesome fates to the cause Of our trampled race! Thou Healer, Soldier, and Poet!
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Poems About War
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The First Shot
That lone rifle-shot anonymous in the dark striding chest-high through a nervous suburb at the break of our season of thunders will yet steep its flight and lodge more firmly than the greater noises ahead in the forehead of memory.
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A Mother in a Refugee Camp
No Madonna and Child could touch Her tenderness for a son She soon would have to forget. . . . The air was heavy with odors of diarrhea, Of unwashed children with washed-out ribs And dried-up bottoms waddling in labored steps Behind blown-empty bellies. Other mothers there Had long ceased to care, but not this one: She held a ghost-smile between her teeth, And in her eyes the memory Of a mother’s pride. . . . She had bathed him And rubbed him down with bare palms. She took from their bundle of possessions A broken comb and combed The rust-colored hair left on his skull And then—humming in her eyes—began carefully to part it. In their former life this was perhaps A little daily act of no consequence Before his breakfast and school; now she did it Like putting flowers on a tiny grave.
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Christmas in Biafra (1969)
This sunken-eyed moment wobbling down the rocky steepness on broken bones slowly fearfully to hideous concourse of gathering sorrows in the valley will yet become in another year a lost Christmas irretrievable in the heights its exploding inferno transmuted by cosmic distances to the peacefulness of a cool twinkling star. . . . To death-cells of that moment came faraway sounds of other men’s carols floating on crackling waves mocking us. With regret? Hope? Longing? None of these, strangely, not even despair rather distilling pure transcendental hate . . . Beyond the hospital gate the good nuns had set up a manger of palms to house a fine plastercast scene at Bethlehem. The Holy Family was central, serene, the Child Jesus plump wise-looking and rose-cheeked; one of the magi in keeping with legend a black Othello in sumptuous robes. Other figures of men and angels stood
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at well-appointed distances from the heart of the divine miracle and the usual cattle gazed on in holy wonder. . . . Poorer than the poor worshippers before her who had paid their homage with pitiful offering of new aluminum coins that few traders would take and a frayed five-shilling note she only crossed herself and prayed open-eyed. Her infant son flat like a dead lizard on her shoulder his arms and legs cauterized by famine was a miracle of its kind. Large sunken eyes stricken past boredom to a flat unrecognizing glueyness moped faraway motionless across her shoulder. . . . Now her adoration over she turned him around and pointed at those pretty figures of God and angels and men and beasts— a spectacle to stir the heart of a child. But all he vouchsafed was one slow deadpan look of total unrecognition and he began again to swivel his enormous head away to mope as before at his empty distance. . . . She shrugged her shoulders, crossed herself again, and took him away.
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Air Raid
It comes so quickly the bird of death from evil forests of Soviet technology A man crossing the road to greet a friend is much too slow. His friend cut in halves has other worries now than a friendly handshake at noon.
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Biafra, 1969
First time Biafra Was here, we’re told, it was a fine Figure massively hewn in hardwood. Voracious white ants Set upon it and ate Through its huge emplaced feet To the great heart abandoning A furrowed, emptied scarecrow. And sun-stricken waves came and beat crazily About its feet eaten hollow Till crashing facedown in a million fragments It was floated gleefully away To cold shores—cartographers alone Marking the coastline Of that forgotten massive stance. In our time it came again In pain and acrid smell Of powder. And furious wreckers Emboldened by half a millennium Of conquest, battening On new oil dividends, are now
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At its black throat squeezing Blood and lymph down to Its hands and feet Bloated by quashiokor. Must Africa have To come a third time?
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An “If” of History
Just think, had Hitler won his war the mess our history books would be today. The Americans flushed by verdict of victory hanged a Japanese commander for war crimes. A generation later an itching finger pokes their ribs: We’ve got to hang our Westmoreland for bloodier crimes in Viet Nam! But everyone by now must know that hanging takes much more than a victim no matter his load of manifest guilt. For even in lynching a judge of sorts is needed— a winner. Just think if Hitler had gambled and won what chaos the world would have known. His implacable foe across the Channel would surely have died for war crimes. And as for H. Truman, the Hiroshima villain, well! Had Hitler won his war
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de Gaulle would have needed no further trial for was he not condemned already by Paris to die for his treason to France? . . . Had Hitler won, Vidkun Quisling would have kept his job as Prime Minister of Norway, simply by Hitler winning.
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Remembrance Day
Your proclaimed mourning your flag at half-mast your solemn face your smart backward step and salute at the flowered foot of empty graves your glorious words—none, nothing will their spirit appease. Had they the choice they would gladly have worn for you the same stricken face gladly flown your droopéd flag spoken your tremulous eulogy—and been alive. . . . Admittedly you suffered too. You lived wretchedly on all manner of gross fare; you were tethered to the nervous precipice day and night; your groomed hair lost gloss, your smooth body roundedness. Truly you suffered much. But now you have the choice of a dozen ways to rehabilitate yourself. Pick any one of them and soon you will forget the fear
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and hardship, the peril on the edge of the chasm. . . . The shops stock again a variety of hair dyes, the lace and the gold are coming back; so you will regain lost mirth and girth and forget. But when, how soon, will they their death? Long, long after you forget they turned newcomers again before the hazards and rigors of reincarnation, rude clods once more who once had borne the finest scarifications of the potter’s delicate hand now squashed back into primeval mud, they will remember. Therefore fear them! Fear their malice your fallen kindred wronged in death. Fear their blood feud; tremble for the day of their visit! Flee! Flee! Flee your guilt palaces and cities! Flee lest they come to ransack your place and find you still at home at the crossroad hour. Pray that they return empty-handed that day to nurse their red-hot hatred for another long year. . . . Your glorious words are not for them nor your proliferation in a dozen cities of the bronze heroes of Idumota. . . . Flee! Seek asylum in distant places till
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a new generation of heroes rise in phalanges behind their purified child-priest to inaugurate a season of atonement and rescue from fingers calloused by heavy deeds the tender rites of reconciliation
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A Wake for Okigbo
For whom are we searching? For whom are we searching? For Okigbo we are searching! Nzomalizo! Has he gone for firewood, let him return. Has he gone to fetch water, let him return. Has he gone to the marketplace, let him return. For Okigbo we are searching. Nzomalizo! For whom are we searching? For whom are we searching? For Okigbo we are searching! Nzomalizo! Has he gone for firewood, may Ugboko not take him. Has he gone to the stream, may Iyi not swallow him! Has he gone to the market, then keep from him you Tumult of the marketplace! Has he gone to battle, please Ogbonuke step aside for him! For Okigbo we are searching! Nzomalizo!
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They bring home a dance, who is to dance it for us? They bring home a war, who will fight it for us? The one we call repeatedly, there’s something he alone can do It is Okigbo we are calling! Nzomalizo! Witness the dance, how it arrives The war, how it has broken out But the caller of the dance is nowhere to be found The brave one in battle is nowhere in sight! Do you not see now that whom we call again And again, there is something he alone can do? It is Okigbo we are calling! Nzomalizo! The dance ends abruptly The spirit dancers fold their dance and depart in midday Rain soaks the stalwart, soaks the two-sided drum! The flute is broken that elevates the spirit The music pot shattered that accompanies the leg in its measure Brave one of my blood! Brave one of Igbo land! Brave one in the middle of so much blood! Owner of riches in the dwelling place of spirit Okigbo is the one I am calling! Nzomalizo!
In memory of the poet Christopher Okigbo (1932–1967) Translated from the Igbo by Ifeanyi Menkiti
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After a War
After a war life catches desperately at passing hints of normalcy like vines entwining a hollow twig; its famished roots close on rubble and every piece of broken glass. Irritations we used to curse return to joyous tables like prodigals home from the city. . . . The meter man serving my maiden bill brought a friendly face to my circle of sullen strangers and me smiling gratefully to the door. After a war we clutch at watery scum pulsating on listless eddies of our spent deluge. . . . Convalescent dancers rising too soon
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to rejoin their circle dance our powerless feet intent as before but no longer adept contrive only half-remembered eccentric steps. After years of pressing death and dizzy last-hour reprieves we’re glad to dump our fears and our perilous gains together in one shallow grave and flee the same rueful way we came straight home to haunted revelry. Christmas 1971
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Poems Not About War
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Love Song ( for Anna)
Bear with me my love in the hour of my silence; the air is crisscrossed by loud omens and songbirds fearing reprisals of middle day have hidden away their notes wrapped up in leaves of cocoyam. . . . What song shall I sing to you my love when a choir of squatting toads turns the stomach of day with goitrous adoration of an infested swamp and purple-headed vultures at home stand sentry on the rooftop? I will sing only in waiting silence your power to bear my dream for me in your quiet eyes and wrap the dust of our blistered feet in golden anklets ready for the return someday of our banished dance.
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Love Cycle
At dawn slowly the Sun withdraws his long misty arms of embrace. Happy lovers whose exertions leave no aftertaste nor slush of love’s combustion; Earth perfumed in dewdrop fragrance wakes to whispers of soft-eyed light. . . . Later he will wear out his temper plowing the vast acres of heaven and take it out on her in burning darts of anger. Long accustomed to such caprice she waits patiently for evening when thoughts of another night will restore his mellowness and her power over him.
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Question
Angled sunbeam lowered like Jacob’s ladder through sky’s peephole pierced in the roof to my silent floor and bared feet. Are these your creatures these crowding specks stomping your lighted corridor to a remote sun, like doped acrobatic angels gyrating at needlepoint to divert a high unamused god? Or am I sole stranger in a twilight room I called my own overrun and possessed long ago by myriads more as yet invisible in all this surrounding penumbra?
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Answer
I broke at last the terror-fringed fascination that bound my ancient gaze to those crowding faces of plunder and seized my remnant life in a miracle of decision between whitecollar hands and shook it like a cheap watch in my ear and threw it down beside me on the earth floor and rose to my feet. I made of their shoulders and heads bobbing up and down a new ladder and leaned it on their sweating flanks and ascended till midair my hands so new to harshness could grapple the roughness of a prickly day and quench the source that fed turbulence to their feet. I made a dramatic descent that day landing backways into crouching shadows
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into potsherds of broken trance. I flung open long-disused windows and doors and saw my hut new-swept by rainbow brooms of sunlight become my home again on whose trysting floor waited my proud vibrant life.
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Beware, Soul Brother
We are the men of soul men of song we measure out our joys and agonies too, our long, long passion week in paces of the dance. We have come to know from surfeit of suffering that even the Cross need not be a dead end nor total loss if we should go to it striding the dirge of the soulful abia drums. . . . But beware soul brother of the lures of ascension day the day of soporific levitation on high winds of skysong; beware for others there will be that day lying in wait leaden-footed, tone-deaf passionate only for the deep entrails of our soil; beware of the day we head truly skyward leaving that spoil to the long ravenous tooth and talon of their hunger. Our ancestors, soul brother, were wiser than is often made out. Remember they gave Ala, great goddess
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of their earth, sovereignty too over their arts for they understood so well those hardheaded men of departed dance where a man’s foot must return whatever beauties it may weave in air, where it must return for safety and renewal of strength. Take care then, mother’s son, lest you become a dancer disinherited in mid-dance hanging a lame foot in air like the hen in a strange unfamiliar compound. Pray protect this patrimony to which you must return when the song is finished and the dancers disperse; remember also your children for they in their time will want a place for their feet when they come of age and the dance of the future is born for them.
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NON-commitment
Hurrah! to them who do nothing see nothing feel nothing whose hearts are fitted with prudence like a diaphragm across womb’s beckoning doorway to bar the scandal of seminal rage. I’m told the owl too wears wisdom in a ring of defense round each vulnerable eye securing it fast against the darts of sight. Long ago in the Middle East Pontius Pilate openly washed involvement off his white hands and became famous. (Of all the Roman officials before him and after who else is talked about every Sunday in the Apostles’ Creed?) And talking of apostles that other fellow Judas wasn’t such a fool either; though much maligned by succeeding generations the fact remains he alone in that motley crowd had sense enough to tell a doomed movement when he saw one and get out quick, a nice little
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packet bulging his coat pocket into the bargain—sensible fellow. September 1970
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Generation Gap
A son’s arrival is the crescent moon too new too soon to lodge the man’s returning. His feast of reincarnation must await the moon’s ripening at the naming ceremony of his grandson.
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Misunderstanding
My old man had a little saying he loved and as he neared his end was prone to relish more and more. Wherever Something stands, he’d say, there also Something Else will stand. Heedless at first I waved it aside as mere elderly prattle that youth have to bear till sharply one day it hit home to me that never before, not even 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
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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shattered their stately march, then recoiled brutally to my heart as he gathered in hasty panic the heaviness of his hindquarters, 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.
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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
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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.
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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
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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.
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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
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hotly why the heads of dead robbers always slump forward or sideways.
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Gods, Men, and Others
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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. Household gods alone frozen in ritual black with blood of endless tribute festooned in feathers perished in the blazing pyre of that hut.
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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
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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.
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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
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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.
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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.
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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
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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.
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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!
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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,
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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. when the word is due to go out again and—depending on which Caesar orders the count—new conurbations may sprout in today’s wastelands, and thriving cities dissolve in sudden mirages and the ready-reckoners at court will calculate their gain and our loss, and make us any-number-of-million-they-like strong!
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Flying ( for Niyi Osundare)
Something in altitude kindles power-thirst Mere horse-height suffices the emir Bestowing from rich folds of prodigious turban Upon crawling peasants in the dust Rare imperceptible nods enwrapped In princely boredom. I too have known A parching of that primordial palate, A quickening to manifest life Of a long recessive appetite. Though strapped and manacled That day I commanded from the pinnacle Of a three-tiered world a bridge befitting The proud deranged deity I had become. A magic rug of rushing clouds Billowed and rubbed its white softness Like practiced houri fingers on my sole And through filters of its gauzy fabric Revealed wonders of a metropolis Magic-struck to fairyland proportions. By different adjustments of vision I caused the clouds to float Over a stilled landscape, over towers
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And masts and smoke-plumed chimneys; Or turned the very earth, unleashed From itself, a roaming fugitive Beneath a constant sky. Then came A sudden brightness over the world, A rare winter’s smile it was, and printed On my cloud carpet a black cross Set in an orb of rainbows. To which Splendid nativity came—who else would come But gray unsporting Reason, faithless Pedant offering a bald refractory annunciation? But oh what beauty! What speed! A chariot of night in panic flight From Our Royal Proclamation of the rites Of day! And riding out Our procession Of fantasy We slaked an ancient Vestigial greed shriveled by ages of dormancy Till the eyes exhausted by glorious pageantries Returned to rest on that puny Legend of the life jacket stowed away Of all places under my seat.
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Now I think I know why gods Are so partial to heights—to mountain Tops and spires, to proud iroko trees And thorn-guarded holy bombax, Why petty household divinities Will sooner perch on a rude board Strung precariously from brittle rafters Of a thatched roof than sit squarely On safe earth.
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Epilogue
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He Loves Me; He Loves Me Not
“Harold Wilson he loves me he gave me a gun in my time of need to shoot my rebellious brother. Edward Heath he loves me not he’s promised a gun to his sharpshooting brother viewing me crazily through ramparts of white Pretoria. . . . It would be awful if he got me.” It was awful and he got him. They headlined it on the BBC spreading indignation through the world, later that day in emergency meeting his good friend Wilson and Heath his enemy crossed swords over him at Westminster and sent posthaste Sir Alec to Africa for the funeral. 73
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Dereliction
I quit the carved stool in my father’s hut to the swelling chant of saber-tooth termites raising in the pith of its wood a white-bellied stalagmite Where does a runner go whose oily grip drops the baton handed by the faithful one in a hard, merciless race? Or the priestly elder who barters for the curio collector’s head of tobacco the holy staff of his people? Let them try the land where the sea retreats Let them try the land where the sea retreats
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We Laughed at Him
We laughed at him our hungry-eyed fool-man with itching fingers who would see farther than all. We called him visionary missionary revolutionary and, you know, all the other naries that plague the peace, but nothing would deter him. With his own nails he cut his eyes, scraped the crust over them peeled off his priceless patina of rest and the dormant fury of his dammed pond broke into a cataract of blood tumbling down his face and chest. . . . We laughed at his screams the fool-man who would see what eyes are forbidden, the hungry-eyed man, the look-look man, the itching man bent to drag into daylight fearful signs hidden away for our safety at the creation of the world. 75
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He was always against blindness, you know, our quiet sober blindness, our lazy—he called it—blindness. And for his pains? A turbulent, torrential cascading blindness behind a Congo river of blood. He sat backstage then behind his flaming red curtain and groaned in the pain his fingers unlocked, in the rainstorm of blows loosed on his head by the wild avenging demons he drummed free from the silence of their drum-house, his prize for big-eyed greed. We sought by laughter to drown his anguish until one day at height of noon his screams turned suddenly to hymns of ecstasy. We knew then his pain had risen to the brain and we took pity on him the poor fool-man as he held converse with himself. My Lord, we heard him say to the curtain of his blood I come to touch the hem of your crimson robe. He went stark mad thereafter raving about new sights he claimed to see, poor fellow; sights you and I know are as impossible for this world to show as for a hen to urinate—if one may borrow one of his many crazy vulgarisms—
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he raved about trees topped with green and birds flying—yes actually flying through the air—about the Sun and the Moon and stars and about lizards crawling on all fours. . . . But nobody worries much about him today; he has paid his price and we don’t even bother to laugh anymore.
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Mango Seedling line 14: the widow of infinite faith refers to the story of the widow of Sarephath in the First Book of Kings, chapter . line 18: Old Tortoise’s miraculous feast: Once upon a time Tortoise went to work for an old woman, and at the end of his labors she set before him a bowl containing a lone cocoyam sitting on a mound of cooked green leaves. Naturally, Tortoise protested vehemently and refused to touch such a meager meal. In the end, however, he was persuaded, still protesting, to give it a try. Then he discovered to his amazement (and nearly his undoing) that another cocoyam always appeared in the bowl as soon as he ate the previous one. line 24: the primordial quarrel of Earth and Sky: This was a dispute over who was sovereign. It led finally to Sky’s withholding of rain for seven whole years, until the ground became hard as iron and the dead could not be buried. Only then did Earth sue for peace, sending high-flying Vulture as emissary.
Christmas in Biafra (1969) line 30: new aluminum coins: A completely unsuccessful effort was made in Biafra to peg galloping prices by introducing new 79
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coins of a lower denomination than the paper money that had come in earlier. But it was too late. The market, having already settled for the five-shilling currency note as its smallest medium of exchange, paid no heed to the new coins.
An “If” of History line 5: A Japanese general named Tomayuki Yamashita was hanged by the Americans at the end of the Second World War for war crimes committed by troops under his nominal command in the Philippines.
Remembrance Day The Igbo people around my hometown, Ogidi, had an annual observance called O.so. Nwanadi. On the night preceding it, all able-bodied men in the village took flight and went into hiding in neighboring villages in order to escape the ire of Nwanadi or dead kindred killed in war. Although the Igbo people admire courage and valor they do not glamorize death, least of all death in battle. They have no Valhalla concept; the dead hero bears the living a grudge. Life is the “natural” state; death is tolerable only when it leads again to life—to reincarnation. Two sayings of the Igbo will illustrate their attitude toward death: (a) A person who cries because he is sick, what will they do who are dead? (b) Before a dead man is reincarnated an emaciated man will recover his flesh.
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A Wake for Okigbo This poem is an elaboration of a traditional Igbo dirge. In some parts of Igbo land the death of a young person was first publicized by members of his or her age grade chanting through the village in a make-believe search for their missing comrade, who they insisted was only playing hide-and-seek with them. The refrain of their chant, nzomalizo, is made up of zo, which means hide, and mali, which is a playful sound. The repeat of zo and the linking mali complete the effect of hiding in play. Ugboko is the personification of the tropical forest, while Iyi personifies the stream. Ogbonuke is the embodiment of ill will and catastrophe.
Love Song ( for Anna) line 8: Leaves of cocoyam come in handy for wrapping small and delicate things. For instance, before storage, kola nuts are wrapped in cocoyam leaves to preserve them from desiccation. However, cocoyam leaves are not for rough handling as Vulture learned to his cost when he received from the hands of an appeased Sky a bundle of rain wrapped in them to take home to drought-stricken Earth.
Beware, Soul Brother line 10: abia drums beaten at the funeral of an Igbo titled man. The dance itself is also called abia and is danced by the dead man’s peers while he lies in state and finally by two men bearing his coffin before it is taken for burial; so he goes to his ancestors by a final rite de passage in solemn paces of dance.
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Misunderstanding The Igbo people have a firm belief in the duality of things. Nothing is by itself, nothing is absolute. “I am the way, the Truth, and the Life” would be meaningless in Igbo theology. They say that a man may be right by Udo and yet be killed by Ogwugwu; in other words, he may worship one god to perfection and yet fall foul of another. Igbo proverbs bring out this duality of existence very well. Take any proverb that puts forward a point of view or a “truth” and you can always find another that contradicts it or at least puts a limitation on the absoluteness of its validity.
Lazarus line 12: Ogbaku: Many years ago a strange and terrible thing happened in the small village of Ogbaku. A lawyer driving on the highway that passes by that village ran over a man. The villagers, thinking the man had been killed, set upon the lawyer and clubbed him to death. Then to their horror, their man began to stir. So, the story went, they set upon him too and finished him off, saying, “You can’t come back having made us do that.”
Those Gods Are Children The attitude of Igbo people to their gods is sometimes ambivalent. This arises from a worldview that sees the land of the spirits as a territorial extension of the human domain. Each sphere has its functions as well as its privileges in relation to the other. Thus a man is not entirely without authority in dealing with the spirit world nor entirely at its mercy. The deified spirits of his ancestors look after his welfare; in return he regularly offers them sustenance in the form of sacrifice. In such a reciprocal relationship one is encouraged (within reason) to try to get the better of the bargain. 82
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Lament of the Sacred Python line 10: acknowledged my face in broken dirges: One of the songs that accompany the dead to the burial place at nightfall has these lines: Look a python! Look a python! Python lies across the way! line 24: creation’s day of gifts: We all choose our gifts, our character, our fate from the Creator just before we make our journey into the world. The sacred python did not choose (like some other snakes) the terror of the fang and venom, and yet it received a presence more overpowering than theirs.
Their Idiot Song The Christian claim of victory over death, is to the unconverted villager, one of the really puzzling things about the faith. Are these Christians just naive or plain hypocritical?
He Loves Me; He Loves Me Not Lines provoked by the news that a street in the Nigerian city of Port Harcourt had been named after Britain’s prime minister Harold Wilson.
Dereliction This poem is in three short movements. The first is the inquirer (onye aju.ju.); the second, the mediating diviner (dibia), who frames the inquiry in general terms; and the third is the Oracle.
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We Laughed at Him line 36: wild avenging demons: This refers to the story of Tortoise and the miraculous food drum offered him in spirit land in compensation for his palm nut that one of the spirit children has eaten. After long use (and misuse) the drum ceases to produce any more feasts when it is beaten. Whereupon Tortoise blatantly contrives a reenactment of his first visit to spirit land. But this time the spirits (fully aware, no doubt, of his greed) take him to a long row of hanging drums and allow him to pick one for himself. As you would expect, he picks the largest and lumbers away under its great weight. Home at last, he makes elaborate arrangements for a feast and then beats the drum. No food comes; instead demons armed with long whips emerge and belabor him to their satisfaction. The element of choice is a recurrent theme in Igbo folklore, especially in man’s dealings with the spirit world. We are not forced; we make a free choice.
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