Homeland

 

What are the things that grow here?

Those that grow from stone, lacking

life and root, flesh and water

things cut as caps

for the baldness of stone.

 

What are the things that flourish here?

Those that rise from dust, without

teeth for the nourishment of sand

things frail and fallen, that fly

with the winds in sweat and sadness.

 

And what are the harvests here?

Of corn crippled before teething

Of tubers poorer than the planted head

Of tomatoes rotted before ripening

Of sand and gravel, burntbush and anthills.

 

What are the dwelling places?

Houses bitter like a weeping face

homes grievous like smoke-pipes

walls held up by pillars of anguish,

where lament makes bed and roof.

 

And how do children grow here?

Out of wombs whipped with want

and desire, the burst forth, to be

tough like street leather, sweet and hardy

like sugarcane, to learn love in safe time.

 

Here, we will walk the streets

where laughter is hidden in deep places

and stores cannot shut their doors

choked with hearts that bleed from gathered wounds

and you will see nothing can grow here but agony.

 

Ogaga Ifowodo

3 October 1992

 

 

 

He Lay Dying at Oshodi

 

You can trust the headless scream of Oshodi

to bury within its cemetery

a frothful battle for living or dying.

And if this concerned a child of twelve

watching death roll to her on rail tracks

what sympathy can come

from the raw-peppered heart of such a horde?

You can trust Oshodi to undertake

the wake of the living.

 

A mere girl of twelve!

She clutched the earth, begging life

in fistfuls of mud, foaming

in her feverish plea for a healing hand.

We filed past, casting half-glances

pleading in turn, impotent worlds of sorrow

where love, lacking muscle, weeps in little graves,

hurrying through the broken fence

to flee malediction in her fading eyes.

 

The train tolled its horn as I crossed the fence

and I wondered if she was bound for home

before the fever made a fire in her bones,

wondered if home was her deathbed of murk

where Oshodi profanes life and death.

I passed again the scene of her mortal battle

and saw the fight she waged then

as she lay dying by the railbars

hoping to pluck a ministering hand

from the crowd deader than her dying self.

 

I too filed past her on that day,

forced to pay last respects to one

more in need of life than mourning.

Dear girl, twined afresh by guilt

I plead breathing corpses of your mourners

in mitigation. I plead flesh that fell

with yours, leaving only rattling bones

that toll your silent cry forever

in the wilds of a headless world.

 

Ogaga Ifowodo

31 December 1990

 

 

 

If One Looks at Your Face

 

If one looks at your face

your bosom, your waist

he will free laughter

from the teeth of crocodiles

and wash his face again.

 

Your eyes are the kitchen stoves

whose fires will never quench

not even in Noah's flood,

your eyes are where we may roast

stones to bread for famished mouths.

 

Your breast, meat-melon multiplied

to cure the thirst of multitudes

enough for my famished mouth,

enough for my hunger-dredged gullet

I claim against tooth, nail water.

 

Your waist is the continent's coast of gold,

draws envious claws to pillage,

but there, is my mine of laughter

crowned with the glitter of dust,

round it I make a fence of fire with my arms.

 

And when a stranger comes

beaten by streets and winds

to lay camp beneath your roofed eyes

you wash his face with his lost laughter

and kill one more crocodile from the neighbourhood.

 

Ogaga Ifowodo

29 January 1992

 

(From Homeland & Other Poems (1998, Ibadan, Kraft Books) and Homeland (Selected poems in German-English issue) (1998, Stuttgart, Edition Solitude).