Read an Excerpt
Gabriel Okara
Collected Poems
By Gabriel Okara, Brenda Marie Osbey UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA PRESS
Copyright © 2016 Board of Regents of the University of Nebraska
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8032-8866-9
CHAPTER 1
Part I
The Early Lyrics
The Call of the River Nun
I hear your call!
I hear it far away;
I hear it break the circle
of these crouching hills.
I want to view your face
again and feel your cold
embrace; or at your brim
to set myself and
inhale your breath; or
Like the trees, to watch
my mirrored self unfold
and span my days with
song from the lips of dawn.
I hear your lapping call!
I hear it coming through;
invoking the ghost of a child
listening, where river birds hail
your silver-surfaced flow.
My river's calling too!
Its ceaseless flow impels
my found'ring canoe down
its inevitable course.
And each dying year
brings near the sea-bird call,
the final call that
stills the crested waves
and breaks in two the curtain
of silence of my upturned canoe.
O incomprehensible God!
Shall my pilot be
my inborn stars to that
final call to Thee
O my river's complex course?
Once Upon a Time
Once upon a time, son,
they used to laugh with their hearts
and laugh with their eyes;
but now they only laugh with their teeth,
while their ice-block-cold eyes
search behind my shadow.
There was a time indeed
they used to shake hands with their hearts;
but that's gone, son.
Now they shake hands without hearts
while their left hands search
my empty pockets.
"Feel at home!" "Come again";
they say, and when I come
again and feel
at home, once, twice,
there will be no thrice —
for then I find doors shut on me.
So I have learned many things, son.
I have learned to wear many faces
like dresses — homeface,
officeface, streetface, hostface,
cocktailface, with all their conforming smiles
like a fixed portrait smile.
And I have learned, too,
to laugh with only my teeth
and shake hands without my heart.
I have also learned to say, "Goodbye,"
when I mean "Good-riddance";
to say "Glad to meet you,"
without being glad; and to say "It's been
nice talking to you," after being bored.
But believe me, son.
I want to be what I used to be
when I was like you. I want
to unlearn all these muting things.
Most of all, I want to relearn
how to laugh, for my laugh in the mirror
shows only my teeth like a snake's bare fangs!
So show me, son,
how to laugh; show me how
I used to laugh and smile
once upon a time when I was like you.
Piano and Drums
When at break of day at a riverside
I hear jungle drums telegraphing
the mystic rhythm, urgent, raw
like bleeding flesh, speaking of
primal youth and the beginning,
I see the panther ready to pounce,
the leopard snarling about to leap
and the hunters crouch with spears poised;
And my blood ripples, turns torrent,
topples the years and at once I'm
in my mother's lap a suckling;
at once I'm walking simple
paths with no innovations,
rugged, fashioned with the naked
warmth of hurrying feet and groping hearts
in green leaves and wild flowers pulsing.
Then I hear a wailing piano
solo speaking of complex ways
in tear-furrowed concerto;
of far-away lands
and new horizons with
coaxing diminuendo, counterpoint,
crescendo. But lost in the labyrinth
of its complexities, it ends in the middle
of a phrase at a daggerpoint.
And I lost in the morning mist
of an age at a riverside keep
wandering in the mystic rhythm
of jungle drums and the concerto.
Were I to Choose
When Adam broke the stone
and red streams raged down to
gather in the womb,
an angel calmed the storm;
And, I, the breath mewed
in Cain, unblinking gaze
at the world without
from the brink of an age
That draws from the groping lips
a breast-muted cry
to thread the years.
(O were I to choose)
And now the close of one
and thirty turns, the world
of bones is Babel, and
the different tongues within
are flames the head
continually burning.
And O of this dark halo
were the tired head free.
And when the harmattan
of days has parched the throat
and skin, and sucked the fever
of the head away,
Then the massive dark
descends, and flesh and bone
are razed. And (O were I to choose) I'd cheat the worms
and silence seek in stone.
Spirit of the Wind
The storks are coming now —
white specks in the silent sky.
They had gone north seeking
fairer climes to build their homes
when here was raining.
They are back with me now —
Spirits of the wind,
beyond the god's confining
hands they go north and west and east,
instinct guiding.
But willed by the gods
I'm sitting on this rock
watching them come and go
from sunrise to sundown, with the spirit
urging within.
And urging a red pool stirs,
and each ripple is
the instinct's vital call,
a desire in a million cells
confined.
O God of the gods and me,
shall I not heed
this prayer-bell call, the noon
angelus, because my stork is caged
in Singed Hair and Dark Skin?
New Year's Eve Midnight
Now the bells are tolling —
A year is dead.
And my heart is slowly beating
the Nunc Dimittis
to all my hopes and mute
yearnings of a year
and ghosts hover round
dream beyond dream
Dream beyond dream
mingling with the dying
bell-sounds fading
into memories
like rain drops
falling into a river.
And now the bells are chiming —
A year is born.
And my heart-bell is ringing
in a dawn.
But it's shrouded things I see
dimly stride
on heart-canopied paths
to a riverside.
You Laughed and Laughed and Laughed
In your ears my song
is motor car misfiring
stopping with a choking cough;
and you laughed and laughed and laughed.
In your eyes my ante-
natal walk was inhuman, passing
your "omnivorous understanding"
and you laughed and laughed and laughed.
You laughed at my song,
you laughed at my walk.
Then I danced my magic dance
to the rhythm of talking drums pleading, but you shut your
eyes and laughed and laughed and laughed.
And then I opened my mystic
inside wide like
the sky, instead you entered your
car and laughed and laughed and laughed.
You laughed at my dance,
you laughed at my inside.
You laughed and laughed and laughed.
But your laughter was ice-block
laughter and it froze your inside froze
your voice froze your ears
froze your eyes and froze your tongue.
And now it's my turn to laugh;
but my laughter is not
ice-block laughter. For I
know not cars, know not ice-blocks.
My laughter is the fire
of the eye of the sky, the fire
of the earth, the fire of the air,
the fire of the seas and the
rivers fishes animals trees
and it thawed your inside,
thawed your voice, thawed your
ears, thawed your eyes and
thawed your tongue.
So a meek wonder held
your shadow and you whispered:
"Why so?"
And I answered:
"Because my fathers and I
are owned by the living
warmth of the earth
through our naked feet."
The Mystic Drum
The mystic drum beat in my inside
and fishes danced in the rivers
and men and women danced on land
to the rhythm of my drum
But standing behind a tree
with leaves around her waist
she only smiled with a shake of her head.
Still my drum continued to beat,
rippling the air with quickened
tempo compelling the quick
and the dead to dance and sing
with their shadows —
But standing behind a tree
with leaves around her waist
she only smiled with a shake of her head.
Then the drum beat with the rhythm
of the things of the ground
and invoked the eye of the sky
the sun and the moon and the river gods —
and the trees began to dance,
the fishes turned men
and men turned fishes
and things stopped to grow —
But standing behind a tree
with leaves around her waist
she only smiled with a shake of her head.
And then the mystic drum
in my inside stopped to beat —
and men became men,
fishes became fishes
and trees, the sun and the moon
found their places, and the dead
went to the ground and things began to grow.
And behind the tree she stood
with roots sprouting from her
feet and leaves growing on her head
and smoke issuing from her nose
and her lips parted in her smile
turned cavity belching darkness.
Then, then I packed my mystic drum
and turned away; never to beat so loud any more.
One Night at Victoria Beach
The wind comes rushing from the sea,
the waves curling like mambas strike
the sands and recoiling hiss in rage
washing the Aladuras' feet pressing hard
on the sand and with eyes fixed hard
on what only hearts can see, they shouting
pray, the Aladuras pray; and coming
from booths behind, compelling highlife
forces ears; and car lights startle pairs
arm in arm passing washer-words back
and forth like haggling sellers and buyers —
Still they pray, the Aladuras pray
with hands pressed against their hearts
and their white robes pressed against
their bodies by the wind; and drinking
palmwine and beer, the people boast
at bars at the beach. Still they pray.
They pray, the Aladuras pray
to what only hearts can see while dead
fishermen long dead with bones rolling
nibbled clean by nibbling fishes, follow
four dead cowries shining like stars
into deep sea where fishes sit in judgement;
and living fishermen in dark huts
sit round dim lights with Babalawo
throwing their souls in four cowries
on sand, trying to see tomorrow.
Still they pray, the Aladuras pray
to what only hearts can see behind
the curling waves and the sea, the stars
and the subduing unanimity of the sky
and their white bones beneath the sand.
And standing dead on dead sands,
I felt my knees touch living sands —
but the rushing wind killed the budding words.
The Snowflakes Sail Gently Down
The snowflakes sail gently
down from the misty eye of the sky
and fall lightly on the
winter-weary elms. And the branches
winter-stripped and nude, slowly
with the weight of the weightless snow
bow like grief-stricken mourners
as white funeral cloth is slowly
unrolled over deathless earth.
And dead sleep stealthily from the
heater rose and closed my eyes with
the touch of silk cotton on water falling.
Then I dreamed a dream
in my dead sleep. But I dreamed
not of earth dying and elms a vigil
keeping. I dreamed of birds, black
birds flying in my inside, nesting
and hatching on oil palms bearing suns
for fruits and with roots denting the
uprooters' spades. And I dreamed the
uprooters tired and limp, leaning on my roots —
their abandoned roots
and the oil palms gave them each a sun.
But on their palms
they balanced the blinding orbs
and frowned with schisms on their
brows — for the suns reached not
the brightness of gold!
Then I awoke. I awoke
to the silently falling snow
and bent-backed elms bowing and
swaying to the winter wind like
white-robed Moslems salaaming at evening
prayer, and the earth lying inscrutable
like the face of a god in a shrine.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Gabriel Okara by Gabriel Okara, Brenda Marie Osbey. Copyright © 2016 Board of Regents of the University of Nebraska. Excerpted by permission of UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA PRESS.
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