Collected Poems (4 page)

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.

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and withdrawn again—and break through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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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

and our loss, and make us

any-number-of-million-they-like strong!

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.