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
may sprout in today's wastelands,
and thriving cities dissolve
in sudden mirages
and the ready-reckoners at court
will calculate their gain
any-number-of-million-they-like strong!
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
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.
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.
Epilogue
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
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.
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
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.
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—
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.
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 17.
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 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 Oso 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 person who cries because he is sick, what will they do who are dead?
Before a dead man is reincarnated an emaciated man will recover his flesh.
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.
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.
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 ajuju); the second, the mediating diviner (dibia), who frames the inquiry in general terms; and the third is the Oracle.
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.
AN ANCHOR BOOKS ORIGINAL, AUGUST 2004
Copyright © 1971, 1973, 2004 by Chinua Achebe
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American
Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States