Christmas in Biafra | Chinua Achebe

This sunked-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 dead-cells
of that moment came farway 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 worshipers

before her who had paid their homage
with pitiful offering of new aluminum
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
cauterised by famine was a miracle
of its kind. Large sunken eyes
stricken past boredom to a flat
unrecognising 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.

Culled from: Chinua Achebe Collected Poems Anchor Books (2004)

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
too well those hard-headed
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.

REFUGEE MOTHER AND CHILD (A Poem) by Chinua Achebe

No Madonna and Child could touch
that picture of a mother�s tenderness
for a son she soon would have to forget.
The air was heavy with odours

of diarrhoea of unwashed children

with washed-out ribs and dried-up
bottoms struggling in laboured
steps behind blown empty bellies. Most
Source: http://cdn3.independent.ie/migration_catalog/Non-
Staff/article25055826.ece/ALTERNATES/h342/Famine
Source:

mothers there had long ceased

to care but not this one; she held
a ghost smile between her teeth
and in her eyes the ghost of a mother�s
pride as she combed the rust-coloured
hair left on his skull and then �

singing in her eyes � began carefully

to part it� In another life this
would have been a little daily
act of no consequence before his
breakfast and school; now she

did it like putting flowers

on a tiny grave.

John Pepper Clark (The Casualties)

The casualties are not only those who are dead.

They are well out of it.
The casualties are not only those who are dead.
Though they await burial by installment.
The casualties are not only those who are lost
Persons or property, hard as it is
To grope for a touch that some
May not know is not there.
The casualties are not only those led away by night.
The cell is a cruel place, sometimes a haven.
No where as absolute as the grave.
The casualties are not only those who started
A fire and now cannot put out. Thousands
Are are burning that have no say in the matter.
The casualties are not only those who are escaping.
The shattered shall become prisoners in
A fortress of falling walls

The casualties are many, and a good member as well

Outside the scenes of ravage and wreck;
They are the emissaries of rift,
So smug in smoke-rooms they haunt abroad,
They do not see the funeral piles
At home eating up the forests.
 They are wandering minstrels who, beating on
The drums of the human heart, draw the world
Into a dance with rites it does not know.

The drums overwhelm the guns�

Caught in the clash of counter claims and charges
When not in the niche others left,
We fall.
All casualties of the war.
Because we cannot hear each other speak.
Because eyes have ceased the face from the crowd.
Because whether we know or
Do not the extent of wrongs on all sides,
We are characters now other than before
The war began, the stay-at-home unsettled

By taxes and rumours, the looters for office

And wares, fearful everyday the owners may return.
We are all casualties,
All sagging as are
The cases celebrated for kwashiorkor.
The unforseen camp-follower of not just our war.

The Anvil and the Hammer by Kofi Awoonor

Caught between the anvil and the hammer

In the forging house of a new life

Transforming the pangs that delivered me

Into the joy of new songs

The trapping of the past, tender and tenuous

Woven with fibre of sisal and

Washed in the blood of the goat in the fetish hut

Are laced with the flimsy glories of paved streets

The jargon of a new dialectic comes with the

Charisma of the perpetual search on the outlaw�s hill.

Sew the old days for us, our fathers,

That we can wear them under our new garment,

After we have washed ourselves in

The whirlpool of the many rivers� estuary

We hear their songs and rumours everyday

Determined to ignore these we use snatches

From their tunes

Make ourselves new flags and anthems

While we lift high the banner of the land

And listen to the reverberation of our songs

In the splash and moan of the sea

Olorun t�o da awon Oke Igbani

Eyin ni mo fo Ope me fun
Olorun t�o da awon Oke Igbani
Eyin ni mo fo Ope me fun

T�ani N�wo tun gbe ga 0

Bi Ko se Baba l�oke

Tani N�wo tun fi gbogbo Ope mi fun

Olorun t�o da awon Oke Igbani

Eyin ni mo fo Ope me fun

My God who created the ancient Hills

I give all my praises to you
My God who created the ancient Hills
I give all my praises to you

Who else will i exalt if not you O God

Who else will i give my praises to�
My God who created the ancient Hills
I give all my praises to you..

�When I look upon the tombs of the great, every emotion of envy dies in me; when I
read the epitaphs of the beautiful, every inordinate desire goes out; when I meet
with the grief of parents upon a tombstone, my heart melts with compassion; when I
see the tombs of the parents themselves, I consider the vanity of grieving for
those whom we must quickly follow; when I see kings lying by those who deposed
them, when I consider rival wits placed side by side, or the men that divided the
world with their contests and disputes, I reflect with sorrow and astonishment on
the little competitions, factions, and debates of mankind. When I read the several
dates of the tombs, of some that died yesterday, and some six hundred years ago, I
consider that great Day when we shall all of us be contemporaries, and make our
appearance together�

Joseph Addison