Chinua Achebe

Collected Poems

Chinua Achebe was born in Nigeria in 1930. 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 1966, 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 1972 to 1975, and again from 1987 to 1988, 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 “1,000 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 1987 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 2002. In 2007, he won the Man Booker International Prize for Fiction.

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.

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

To the Memory of My Mother

Contents

In Lieu of a Preface: A Parable

Prologue

1966

Benin Road

Mango Seedling

Pine Tree in Spring

The Explorer

Agostinho Neto

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

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

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 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.

- -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.

Prologue

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

Benin Road

Speed is violence

Power is violence

Weight violence

The butterfly seeks safety in lightness

In weightless, undulating light

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.

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

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

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?

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

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.

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,

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!

Poems About War

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.

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.

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

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 aluminium

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.

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.

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

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?

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

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.

Remembrance Day

Your proclaimed mourning

your flag at half-mast your

solemn face yoursmart 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

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

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

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!

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

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

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

Poems Not About War

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.

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.

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?

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 white-

collar 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 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.

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

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.

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

packet bulging his coat pocket

into the bargain—sensible fellow.

September 1970

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

shattered their stately march, then

recoiled brutally to my heart

as he gathered in hasty panic

the heaviness of his hind

quarters, 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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

hotly why the heads of dead

robbers always slump forward

or sideways.

Gods, Men, and Others

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.

ousehold gods alone

frozen in ritual black with blood

of endless tribute festooned in feathers

perished in the blazing pyre

of that hut.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

and our loss, and make us

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

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.

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:

1. A person who cries because he is sick, what will they do who are dead?

2. 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

by Anchor Books, a division of Random House, Inc.,

New York.

Anchor Books and colophon are registered trademarks

of Random House, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Achebe, Chinua.

[Poems]

Collected poems / Chinua Achebe.

p. cm.

eISBN: 978-0-307-51791-3

1. Nigeria—Poetry. I. Title.

PR9387.9.A3A17 2004

821′.914—dc22

2004040986

www.anchorbooks.com

v3.0