Timbuktu¹ Fed a Multitude

And now my ancient rhythm calls me,

Out of ashes and fraternal death…

Christopher Ifekandu Okigbo, Heavensgate—1962.

Before you

Mother Mbadike²

A son, lost and agape I stand.

Before you

Who bred patriots and brave men

Who was ruled by spirits of your land

Who dismantled the untrustworthy!

Before you

Whose ancestors fearlessly reacted to Selah!³

And on merit

Lived like Methuselah!⁴

A stranded son

Your sad present has seen other times

Your murderers,

As unpopular leaders,

Quick and good at the evil they practice

Thrive in encoding your offspring;

Today’s deadly desire for mammon

One result!

Dishonesty

—Another!

Before you

A retarded son

Identity smirched

Today’s common dream needing more from me

And less from the rest

Who once visited you in Timbuktu

Desperate for your vast knowledge.

For flying your flag;

Dejected and bleak.

And thus before you

Beseeching I will remain

Out of the nadir my cry;

Will you give ear and hearken?

As I endlessly struggle to comprehend

My shameful story of

Victor become downtrodden.

Notes:

Christopher Ifekandu Okigbo (1932 – 1967) is today reckoned as one of the finest poets Africa has produced. This poem Timbuktu Fed a Multitude as it contains materials from his Heavensgate (1962) is an accolade to a poet who was profoundly unique.

—————— Aficionado, compatriot and poet, A–Gonzaga.

***

1. A city in Tombouctou Region of Mali. Assumed to have had one of the first universities in the world. Also a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

2. Nation-of-the-great. (Used in this poem as a personification for Africa).

3. Summonses.

4. A patriarch who lived 969 years.

Should I?

Should I risk it all

Now that it’s become

An open secret

That Black kills Black

For a meagre lunch ticket?

Should I?

How do I gamble it?

I mean My Life

For Your Life…

That the next Black generation

Would live among the proudest

With only my bow

And a handful of arrows

Can I be hopeful?

Hopeful

Of battalions

Of brothers and sisters

Determined to revive

That Blackness that’s

Ever-heroic

The spirit that was Malcolm,¹

Marley,² and Dr. King³

What about a mass–procreation

Of the Will that still dwells in Wade,⁴

Al-Gaddafi,⁵ Mugabe,⁶ and Tutu?⁷

We know it’s worth it

But should I?

Now that I must

First wonder

How much I can rely

On the brother

With the repellent guts

To hit Bola Ige;⁸

The brother who slew Mr. Dube⁹

They elevate their captors

We eradicate our actors

So, should I?

And assuming I shouldn’t

Supposing I succumb

To these trepidations; God forbid!

Who should we tell

The next Black generation

That the coward was?

Me

For not having your trust?

Or You

For not living up to your Blackness?

Notes:

1. Malcolm X.

2. Robert Nesta “Bob” Marley.

3. Martin Luther King, Jr.

4. Abdoulaye Wade.

5. Muammar Abu Minyar al-Gaddafi.

6. Robert Gabriel Karigamombe Mugabe.

7. Desmond Mpilo Tutu.

8. James Ajibola Idowu Ige, a Nigerian lawyer and politician slew December 23, 2001.

9. Lucky Philip Dube, a South African reggae musician murdered in the Johannesburg suburb of Rosettenville, October 18, 2007.

If Kilimanjaro Had a Voice

The Pope called us the faithful

he has urged us to hold up;

“Be hopeful and pray!”

but Kilimanjaro knows best

and if she had a voice

she would demonstrate

for the desperate

and even seize a chance

to make her own outcry heard

about how she’s been violated

by hungry men and women

unrelenting in their needs…

Pants rolled up, bare-kneed and

injured,

in scorching heat,

losing blood and still

creeping,

further than nineteen thousand feet

above the soil,

crawling upward,

fasting and seeking

forgiveness for sins which

they know not when they committed,

and which are in fact nonexistent.

If she had a voice,

she would scream out in protest

about how she’s been deafened

by the poor Africans’ grumbling—

who instead of looking

to their government for intervention,

believe the gate to an African Utopia

has fallen suddenly under the charge

of Fortuna¹

whom (they suppose)

has relocated

near the cone of Kibo.²

It smacks of the doggedness

of a world devalued

where we have been forced

to entice the devil

to steer and protect

sons and daughters

who must exterminate

in order to bring home.

Notes:

“Kilimanjaro” as applied in this poem serves as a personification for hills and forests that in reality are commonly climbed and wandered in prayers by underprivileged Christians in Africa and beyond.

***

1. The ancient Roman goddess of fortune.

2. One of Mt. Kilimanjaro’s three volcanic cones.