(For Chinua Achebe at 70<\/em>)<\/p>\n I<\/b><\/p>\n Ah, Chinua, are you grapevine wired? Doctors IMF, World Bank and UNO refuse, it seems, Time was, our gazes roamed the land, godlike, Grim cycle of embattled years. Again we died We scaled the ranges of Obudu, prospected In the mind\u2019s compost, meagre scrub yielded We would steal secrets from the gods. Let Sango\u2019s axe Vain griots! Still, we sang the hennaed lips and fingers <\/p>\n Alas for lost idylls. Like Levi jeans on youth and age, But Chinua, are you grapevine wired? Do you But then, our offsprings, Chinua, have they leisure Are ours the emerging children of Molucca Still, here you sit before the travelled world, gathered Absences surround your presence \u2013 he Did time appoint these bailiffs? Behold Chinua, I think with you I dare <\/p>\n II<\/b><\/p>\n There are wonders in that land, Chinua An encampment is on the move, biped They\u2019ll murder heritage in its timeless crib, Shall Ala die? Ahiajoku be anathematised? Does We who neither curse their gods nor desecrate Some are born pagan, wedded to life\u2019s seamlessness Let all creeds be recast. If the gates of Paradise How shall they be taught, Chinua, that Ajapa The jealous gods are no more. Age by age But we survived, Chinua. And though survival reads The masquerade\u2019s falsetto may reveal, not <\/p>\n *Elegy for a Nation (For Chinua Achebe at 70) I Ah, Chinua, are you grapevine wired? It sings: our nation is not dead, not clinically Yet. Now this may come as a surprise to you, It was to me. I thought the form I spied Beneath the frosted glass of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1352,"parent":229,"menu_order":2,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-662","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue15\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/662","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue15\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue15\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue15\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue15\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=662"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue15\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/662\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1455,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue15\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/662\/revisions\/1455"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue15\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/229"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue15\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1352"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue15\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=662"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nIt sings: our nation is not dead, not clinically
\nYet. Now this may come as a surprise to you,
\nIt was to me. I thought the form I spied
\nBeneath the frosted glass of a fifty-carat catafalque
\nWas the face of our own dear land \u2014 \u2018own,\u2019 \u2018dear,\u2019
\nVoluntary patriotese, you\u2019ll note \u2014 we try to please.
\nAn anthem\u2019s sentiment upholds the myth.<\/p>\n
\nTo issue a certificate of death \u2013 if debtors die
\nMay creditors collect? We shall turn Parsees yet,
\nLay this hulk in state upon the Tower of Silence,
\nLet vultures prove what we have seen, but fear to say \u2013
\nFor if Leviathan is dead, we are the maggots
\nProbing still her monstrous womb \u2013 one certainty
\nThat mimics life after death. Is the world fooled?
\nIs this the price of hubris \u2013 to have dared
\nSound Renaissance bugles for a continent?<\/p>\n
\nPronounced it good, from Lagos to Lake Chad.
\nThe hosts of interlopers would be exorcised,
\nNot throwing the baby out with the bathwater,
\nEnthroning ours as ours, bearing names
\nLodged in marrow of the dead, attesting lineage.
\nConsecrated brooms would sweep our earth
\nClean of usurpers\u2019 footprints. We marched
\nTo drums of ancient skins, homoeopathic
\nBeat against the boom of pale-knuckled guns.
\nWe vied with the regal rectitude of Overamwen \u2013
\nNo stranger breath \u2013 he swore \u2013 shall desecrate
\nThis hour of communion with our gods! We
\nDied with the women of Aba, they who held
\nA bridgehead against white levy, armed with pestle,
\nSash and spindle, and a potent nudity \u2013 eloquent
\nAbomination in the timeless rites of wrongs.<\/p>\n
\nWith miners of Iva valley who undermined
\nMore than mere seams of anthracite. All too soon,
\nAlas, we would augment, in mimic claims,
\nIn our own right, the register of martyrs. Oh,
\nHow we\u2019ve exercised the right of righteous folly
\nIn defence of alien rhetoric . . . what God has joined, etcetera.
\nFor God, read white, read slaver surrogates.<\/p>\n
\nJos Plateau, pilgrims on rock-hills of Idanre.
\nFloated on pontoons from Bussa to silt beds
\nOf eternal Niger, reclaimed the mangrove swamps,
\nStartling mudskipper, manatee, and mermaids.
\nDid others claim the mantle of discoverers?
\nLet them lay patents on ancestral lands, lay claim
\nTo paternity of night and day \u2013 ours
\nWere hands that always were, hands that pleat
\nThe warp of sunbeam and the weft of dew,
\nOurs to create the seamless out of paradox.<\/p>\n
\nSilos of grain. Walled cities to the north were
\nSheaths of gold turbans, tuneful as minarets.
\nThe dust of Durbars, pyrotechnic horsemen
\nAnd sparkling lances, all one with the ring of anvils
\nFrom Ogun\u2019s land to Ikenga\u2019s. Rainbow beads, jigida
\nFrom Bida\u2019s furnaces vied across the sky with
\nIyun glow and Ife bronzes, luscent on ivory arches
\nOf Benin. Legend lured Queen Amina to Moremi,
\nOld scars of strife redeemed in tapestries
\nOf myth, recreating birthpang, and rebirth. And, yes \u2013<\/p>\n
\nSpark thunderstones on rooftops, we would swing
\nIn hawser hammocks on electric pylons, pulse through cities
\nIn radiant energies, surge from battery racks to bathe
\nTown and hamlet in alchemical light. Orisa-oko
\nWould heal with herbs and scalpel. Ogun\u2019s drill
\nWas poised to plumb the earth anew, spraying aloft
\nReams of rare alloys. Futurists, were we not
\nAnnunciators of the Millennium long before its advent?
\nIn our now autumn days, behold our leaden feet
\nFast welded to the starting block.<\/p>\n
\nOf our gazelle womenfolk, fecund Muses tuned
\nTo Senghorian cadences. We grew filament eyes
\nAs heads of millet, as flakes of cotton responsive
\nTo brittle breezes, wraith-like in the haze of Harmattan.
\nGreen of the cornfields of Oyo, ochre of groundnut pyramids
\nOf Kano, indigo in the ancient dye-pots of Abeokuta
\nBronzed in earth\u2019s tonalities as children of one deity \u2013
\nWe were the cattle nomads, silent threads through
\nForestries and cities, coastland and savannah,
\nWafting Maiduguri to the sea, ocean mist to sand dunes.<\/p>\n
\nThe dreams are faded, potholed at joints and even
\nMilder points of stress. Ghosts are sole inheritors.
\nSilos fake rotundity \u2013 these are kwashi-okor blights
\nUpon the landscape, depleted at source. Even
\nThe harvest seeds were long devoured. Empty hands
\nScrape the millennial soil at planting.<\/p>\n
\nTune in, listen? There is old music in the air.
\nThe word is out again, out from the closet.
\nRenaissance beats are thumbed in government lairs,
\nIn lobbies, caucuses, on promotion posters,
\nIn parliaments. Academe\u2019s close behind. Renaissance
\nHaunts beer and suya bar, street and rostrum,
\nInhaled as tobacco smoke, chewed as kola,
\nClerics beatify the word, lawyers invoke it.
\nNever word more protean, poised to incarnate
\nIn theses, conferences, investments. A historic lure
\nRomances the Diaspora. Gang-raped, the continent
\nTurns pregnant with the word \u2013 it\u2019s sworn, we shall be
\nBorn again, though we die in the attempt.<\/p>\n
\nTo play at love? To commune with Source, shaded
\nBy coarse-grain village walls at noon? Crush wild mint
\nBetween their fingers, let the agbayun coat
\nTheir tongues, at war with the bitterness of kola?
\nRaid the hoards of gods and ancients,
\nRecite their lineage praise-names, clan histories?
\nOr have the rigours of survival bred a race
\nOf naked predators? Is sharing out of fashion?
\nCommunity a dirty word, service an obscenity?<\/p>\n
\nBorn to burn at six, slaughter at seven,
\nRinse their hand in the throat\u2019s death gurgle,
\nSecure in the arch-priest\u2019s absolution? Attuned
\nAt noon to dissolution of the bond of dawn, deaf
\nTo neighbour cries? Easy reddened are the wafers
\nOf communion \u2013 have we been here before?<\/p>\n
\nTo pay homage. Survived the kwashi-okor days.
\nYou\u2019ve fed on roots, barks and leaves
\nYour world contracted, ringed with iron
\nFenced with the wringing hands of the world
\nAs unctuous in neutrality as Pontius Pilate.
\nBut you made flesh what is so often said \u2013
\nSweet are the uses of adversity \u2013 as even now
\nYour silent eloquence attests. The ancient pot-stills
\nTurned refineries. Neglected herbs, mystery silica
\nPowered transistors to accuse the world, screaming
\nWe are not dead, but dying. And iron monsters
\nRose furtively from forest bays, hammered
\nFrom the forges of Awka. Who can forget the errant
\nOgbunikwe that rose skywards, plunged to blast
\nA fiery tunnel through encircling steel?<\/p>\n
\nThe great town crier, Okigbo, and other griots
\nSilenced in infancy. The xylophones of justice
\nChime much louder than the flutes of poets,
\nTheir sirens lure the bravest to their doom.
\nBut some survive, and survival breeds, it seems,
\nUnending debts. Time is our usurer, but earth remains
\nSole signatory to life\u2019s covenant \u2013 and thus I ask:
\nWhose feet are these upon the storehouse loft?
\nShod in studded boots or jewelled sandals,
\nKhaki crisp or silk embroidered \u2013 who are these?<\/p>\n
\nEnforcers out of time, shorn of memory but \u2013
\nCrowned are the hollow skulls, signets on talons.
\nTheir advent is the hour of locusts \u2013 behold
\nCheeks in cornucopia from the silos\u2019 depletion
\nWhile the eyes of youth sink deeper in despair.
\nDeath bestrides the streets, rage rides the sun
\nAnd hope is a sometime word that generations
\nNever learnt to spell.<\/p>\n
\nBe indelicate \u2013 we scrape our feet upon
\nThe threshold of mortal proof, denying
\nThe ancestors yet awhile our companionship \u2013
\nMay that day learn patience from afar! \u2013
\nOn the stage at Bard, behind the lectern,
\nGazing across time to your staunch spirit
\nWedded to a contraption we neither make nor mend
\nMy irreverent thoughts were \u2013 There sits the nation,
\nAll faculties intact, but wheelchair bound.
\nYour lesson of the will, alas, a creative valour
\nMarks the gulf between you and that land
\nWe claim our own.<\/p>\n
\nAre you wired? Tuned to images of cyber age?
\nSevered wrists will soon adorn our walls
\nAnd Conrad\u2019s Heart of Darkness be fulfilled.
\nThe cairn of stones is building for the first
\nButchery in a public square, a female scapegoat
\nTethered for primordial rites that men devise
\nTo keep their womenfolk obedient to the laws of man.<\/p>\n
\nAmorphous tents, a sorcerer invasion choreographed
\nIn castration shrouds, visors no less secretive
\nThan face-masks, twin to ancestral masquerades
\nProclaimed infidel. They slink through streets
\nAnd markets \u2013 yes, it is our women on the move
\nOur mothers, wives and sisters, comrades-in-arms
\nBereft of limbs and faces, haute couture decreed
\nBy encyclicals of eunuch priests. Features
\nMummified by laws of terror. Oh my compatriots,
\nShaved bare-skull at initiation, convertites
\nDipped body and soul in the waters of salvation
\nAre yours these zombies of the age, are these
\nThe paracletes of the new millennium?<\/p>\n
\nDecree our, heroes, heroines out of memory
\nObliterate the narratives of clans, names
\nThat bind to roots, reach to heavens, our
\nLinks to ancestral presences. The Born-Agains
\nAre on rampage, born against all that spells
\nLife and mystery, legend and innovation.
\nImprecations rend the air, song is taboo,
\nThe stride of sun-toned limbs racing wind a sin,
\nFlesh is vile, wine, the gift of earth, execrated.
\nThese tyrants have usurped the will of God.
\nHow did we fail to learn, that guns and boots
\nAre not essential to a coup d \u2018\u00e9tat?<\/p>\n
\nOya defile her streams, Ifa obstruct the paths
\nOf learning and councils of the wise? Praise the Lord
\nAnd launch the bulldozer \u2013 they\u2019ve razed
\nThe statues of mbari to the ground, these
\nChristian Talibans. Their brothers in Offa
\nMurder Moremi in her shrine, shrieking Allah akbar.
\nRivals else, behold their bonded zeal that sanctifies
\nAlien rape of our quiescent Muses, extolling theirs.<\/p>\n
\nTheir texts, their prayer mats or altars \u2013
\nWhat shall we do, Chinua, with these hate clerics?
\nWhile we sleep, their fingers spread as brambles,
\nDeface our Book of Life. How teach them:<\/p>\n
\nTuned to the breath of things, magma and animus.
\nThe waters of the Holy Gospel bounced against
\nThis splinter of Olumo Rock, retreated
\nIn despair, seeking more porous earth. How reveal
\nThe sublimity of godhead that abhors
\nThe murdering tyranny of Creed? Has gore
\nProved godlove on Kaduna streets \u2013 ten thousand
\nMutilations and three thousand dead of faith?
\nBut the sun rose still the following dawn, indifferent.<\/p>\n
\nAre locked behind the Pope\u2019s demise,
\nWe wish him blessed occupancy of yonder realms
\nWith all the Heavenly Host. Has the last Imam
\nBeen here and gone? Then, Bon Voyage
\nSeek me out among the questers, creed-divorced,
\nIn covenant only to that solvent that is earth.<\/p>\n
\nLives, but no longer borrows feathers from the birds
\nTo survey earth? Myths are our wise cohabitants. Icarus .1.
\nTranscended wax, new trajectories lace the spheres.
\nThe galaxy is boundless host to a new race
\nOf voyagers, seeking the once forbidden. Cinders
\nFrom Promethean dares, shards of Ajapa\u2019s shell,
\nAre constellations by which ships of space are steered.<\/p>\n
\nWe inched towards the sun, then raced beyond
\nTo drink the heady draught of space, returned to earth
\nEmboldened. The voices of new prophets are not voided
\nIn the wilderness but fulfilled. Applause
\nIs the new music of the spheres \u2013 it\u2019s heard
\nIn other lands, I am told. I have not heard it here.<\/p>\n
\nUnending debt \u2013 for time, alas decrees us
\nWitnesses, thus debtors \u2013 earth alone remains
\nOur creditor. Yet I fear the communion pots
\nLie broken at the crossroads, kola nuts and cowries
\nScattered by scavengers. Couriers turn coat,
\nTurned by profit, priest, predator and politician.<\/p>\n
\nArtifice but loss of voice, its gutturals camouflage
\nDeath throes, not echoes of our spirit realms.
\nThe strongest eagle, wing-span clipped, talons
\nManicured in gilded thumbscrews may not hold
\nNor bear the weight of sacrifice. Our caryatids
\nAre weary of cycles of endless debts. Incense
\nOf burnt offering, heavy with abominations
\nHangs dose to altar, dissipates between Earth
\nAnd Sky. Shorn of new alibis, our intercessors
\nFalter at the door of judgement. What shall we say
\nTo the years that drift past, accusing?
\nWhat shall we chant to their dew-bright notes \u2013
\nOur new tuned buglers of the Renaissance?<\/p>\n* By permission of the author. First published in the Collection, Of Samarkand and other Markets I have Known <\/i>(2002)<\/h6>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"