The love that I have is consuming me. But I am not pretending to be angry.
welcome to Heavens gate, brother Pius. I am glad to see you after many years of yearning and pleased to hear that you lived a worthwhile life.
I had been itching to talk to you, my brother, for you were there when this bug caught me. My transformation from a hunter of answers into a big question mark had left me restless. Did I hear that finally, I might be getting a burial? Isn’t it relatively late? I have become an invisible poet; no hole is big enough to keep me grounded. I float above limits.
I have listened carefully to you and I want to address you about the things I have heard. I have heard people quote Edward Said. I have heard them say that I was a victim of that pitfall- a casualty of paranoid nationalism. They say that I compromised intellectual integrity. Some even say I subjected my art to the narrowness of tribalism. O’ Lord! What use is a poet if he saves his life, only to be left for a home- a “cultural wasteland”? Should I be happy as strangers devour eke Idemili for dinner?
William Blake said it first, and I can’t say it enough: the nation follows the art. That is just the way it is. Cultural erosion is not the same as a cultural handshake. Dante’s universal community must wait if it is arrogant about appreciating the gift of each quilt.
Remember what I said before, ‘we carry in our worlds that flourish, our worlds that failed.’ You can resort to using learning to liberate people. But is what you are learning the truth? If it is, do you have the means of understanding it? Have those in the school of resentment moved over?
You asked me when I last thought about the dialectic of utopia and ideology as part of unified political consciousness. I say it is all in seduction. It always comes first. Then it is a struggle. It always exerts a cost. And finally, it is memory—memories of the worlds that failed and the worlds that succeeded. As I see it, you are either looking behind the rising sun or looking in front. I am searching. I am still searching. But I am yet to find the argument that supersedes the moral value.
Those searching for a reason to remain cowards have tried me in my absence. They proceed to tell me who I am and where I come from. They tell me to whom my allegiance should be as if they were there when the good Lord chose Ojoto. They want the poet in their pocket even when it’s full of dirt. They forgot that I mapped the path of thunder. They forgot.
My brother, tell them this. Tell them to keep their semantics to themselves. I am a testament to the heart of that lynched dream. This shred of history coming out of temporary insanity shall grow into a monster – a monster of which no grace can reprieve.
To you all, I say, I beg your indulgence, if I may. I beg your indulgence to die for my people. Yesterday, you were all my people. Then someone broke the continuity and there burst our moral inferno. And there, I found my essence. Those who disagree, those who want the alter boy to ignore the subpoena, and those who are not total in their dedication would be the acrobatic peers when the dance of death resumes.
When I sew up words, I was true to my art. I was true to the images jogging around my divided soul. When they assaulted my shrine, the place where my soul took root, I answered the call. I answered my father’s name. I took in the lead. Mine was a war of honor and the gown of glory I wore.
You are beyond redemption all you who think about embrace while desecration turns your nursery of lyrics into a tomb of defiled indigos. My wrath was the wrath of Idoto. And so, it shall remain until Idoto hears an apology and accepts the apology. And I know Idoto. Idoto will not accept an empty apology.
I know you. You prefer to forget. You prefer to bury alive, the horrors and the inhumanity. But I tell you, my friends, the guilt shall keep popping up like a balloon buried in a pond. So, do not give me pathos, for I have no self-pity. If you really want to remember, stop being resigned. Be rejuvenated in your heart. Don’t sit to lament. Rather prepare for landing. Prepare, for we are going to touch down in no distant time.
I am now an invisible poet and I tell you this: the only place your illusion should come before my struggle is on the obituary page. As long as your illusion continues to disturb, my struggle must continue to assure. You can detest me the more if you like. But here I stand, invisible to your eyes. The same spot your history said I fell. My draft of the Biafran anthem is forever a stillbirth. Unlike a miscarriage, this stillbirth haunts you forever.
Can I ask you some questions? Have they stopped being pretty? I mean, the rulers of your illusion? Have they stopped getting away with anything? Are they still holding you down? Are they? I don’t think so. If you were truly down, if they really stood in your way, you would have done something. For that is what men do. That was what our fathers did. Or have you all become like them? Have you begun to wear agbada, melt your ulis and pick some from the Ohas that we have always been and turn them into ezes? Ohaneze? Have you?
Ah! I know what you are thinking. Christopher Okigbo is frozen in time. Christopher Okigbo is unrepentant. No need to hold on to dreams, dreams are no longer needed—no need to sing a song already retired. You are right. I can’t repent. I can’t repent in my grave.
I can’t rapture. I can’t rapture without a burial. How I wish you all know that madness awaits the poet who turns his back. This has been my motto. If my struggle is evil, let me try it. It is one evil I want to taste. The other evil, your illusion, I am used to.
