Achebe – II
Monday Quiz
1. What’s the title of Ikem’s lecture?
2. Of the peasants, the workers and/or the students,
who would Ikem trust to run the government?
3. What happens to Mad Medico?
4. How does Chris know that Ikem was murdered in
cold-blood, instead of shot by a police officer during an
act of self-defense?
5. Who is Emmanuel?
6. Why is Beatrice suddenly kind to Agatha?
7. Who are the three green bottles?
8. How does Chris escape the policeman who stops him
at the check point?
Gabriel Okara
Gabriel Okara – (1921 - ) Nigeria. His work deals
with both colonial past and neocolonial present.
The following poems contrast Western and
African cultures, focusing on the differences and
underplaying the complementarity that is
possible between cultures and necessary to
create harmony in the world. He decries the
mockery and rejection of his culture by the West
and he describes how, in the neocolonial era,
the African elite is alienated from African culture
and develops self-hatred.
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;
Piano and Drums
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.
Piano and Drums
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.
Piano and Drums
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.
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 antenatal 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.
You 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.
You Laughed and Laughed and
Laughed
And now it’s my turn to laugh;
but my laugher is not
ice-block laugher. 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.
You Laughed and Laughed and
Laughed
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.”
Agostinho Neto – (1922-1979)
Angola.
A militant worker for Angolan independence, he
served several terms of imprisonment under the
Portuguese colonial regime. As president of the
People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola,
he lead his country to independence and
became its first president in 1975. His poetry is
about the plight of the peasants and workers in
Angola. They are in a state of deprivation, cut off
from the joys of life and relegated to a world of
servitude by the bearers of “Western
Civilization.”
Night
I live
in the dark quarters of the
world
without light, nor life.
Anxious to live,
I walk in the streets
feeling my way
leaning into my shapeless
dreams,
stumbling into servitude.
-- Dark quarters
worlds of wretchedness
where the will is watered down
and men
are confused with things.
I walk, lurching,
through the unlit
unknown streets crowded
with mystery and terror,
I, arm in arm with ghosts,
And the night too is dark.
Kinaxixi (a working class
residential area in Angola)
I was glad to sit down
On a bench in Kinaxixi
at six o’clock of a hot evening
and just sit there . . .
Someone would come
maybe
to sit beside me
And I would see the black faces
of the people going uptown
in no hurry
expressing absence in the
jumbled Kimbundu they conversed in.
Kinaxixi (a working class
residential area in Angola)
I would see the tired footsteps
of the servants whose fathers are also servants
looking for love here, glory there, wanting
something more than drunkenness in every
Alcohol
Neither happiness nor hate
After the sun had set
lights would be turned on and I
would wander off
thinking that our life after all is simple
too simple
for anyone who is tired and still has to walk.
Western Civilizations
Sheets of tin nailed to posts
driven in the ground
make up the house.
Some rags complete
the intimate landscape.
The sun slanting through
cracks
welcomes the owner
After twelve hours of slave
labor
breaking rock
shifting rock
breaking rock
shifting rock
fair weather
wet weather
breaking rock
shifting rock
Old age comes early
a mat on dark nights
is enough when he dies
gratefully
of hunger.