It is not speaking in tongue, child;
\nit is baiting fish with fish.<\/i><\/p>\n
And so, I, a blind, tap around
\nfor the door to my history.
\nIt\u2019s dark and dark everywhere.
\nEmpty spaces cry for meaning!<\/p>\n
I have sworn a bond with life.
\nTo hold my end, I fall back on dreams
\nlike bards, who spread honey-laced feelers
\nin the dark, hoping for errant ephemerals.<\/p>\n
Crafty, wiry midwives!
\nI\u2019ve learned from their magic.
\nI, who have always dreamt
\nto trick words from the dumb.<\/p>\n
I swish my heart into our village\u2019s muddy pond
\nwhere witches meet at night for fussy, fiery feasts.
\nWhatever the line pulls up must be able to sing
\nin the language of mortals of all ages and races.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
(For Chinua Achebe \u2013 1930-2013)<\/p>\n
On his deathbed the elder opened his palms.
\nEmpty, he said. Like the long road ahead.
\nI have planted the seeds my father gave me;
\nplanted them the way my mother taught me.<\/p>\n
Look around you and in the old barn.
\nMore seeds, dung, watering cans, machetes,
\ntwo sided machetes. What needs to be said
\nhas been said. All else is up to you.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
(For Gloria Eze, 1973 \u2013 2005)<\/p>\n
I know a small hill down the village road
\nwhere the dead come to meet daily at dawn.
\nI went there for you; you couldn\u2019t be found.
\nDid we bury you so deep into our gluey loam?<\/p>\n
What pried you from us is stronger than our will.
\nBut what binds us is tougher than the pull of death.
\nI offer you these words as victuals on your way.
\nTake them and do not look back in regret.<\/p>\n
Since you never visited us I know you\u2019re loved
\nwherever you are the way we\u2019ve loved you.
\nWhat else could have rent our hearts as your death did?
\nI speak to you not to make you feel guilty;<\/p>\n
I speak to you to let you know and have you beam:
\nIn every corner of our house I find silky threads
\nof your hearty laugh; they stitch our hearts back again
\nto the shape that love has meant them to be.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
When we dug up the third skull in our farm after the war,
\nmy mother asked us to leave the farm to fallow.
\nShe was tired of burying remnants of strange folks,
\ntired of burrowing into our troubled past;
\nwhen the farm has become a bush,
\nwe would have forgotten all it swallowed.<\/p>\n
I swear, it was not the past that she avoided;
\nit was the present, a bride, beautiful but blind,
\nlike me, in whose eyes are grating sands.
\nThe elders.<\/p>\n
Why did they throw sand against the wind?
\nWhy did they forget that kids were around?<\/p>\n
I, too, am tired of digging up bones for answers.
\nBut should I then whip up solutions
\nlike the priests and prophets of my clan?
\nI\u2019m not a priest; I\u2019m a poet, condemned
\nto sing for the joy of strangers and for Mr. Okoli,
\nthe one-legged dancer of our town
\nwho travels miles and miles just to dance.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Poetry It is not speaking in tongue, child; it is baiting fish with fish. And so, I, a blind, tap around for the door to my history. It\u2019s dark and dark everywhere. Empty spaces cry for meaning! I have sworn a bond with life. To hold my end, I fall […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1650,"parent":229,"menu_order":2,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"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\/issue16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/662","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=662"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/662\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1624,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/662\/revisions\/1624"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/229"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1650"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=662"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}