Abiku January 19, 2007
Posted by ibenaija in Africa, Blogroll, Naija, Nigeria, Poetry, Superstition.trackback
An unending cycle
of death and rebirth;
An emergence,
destined to spiral
swiftly,
disquietingly,
into abyssal depths.
*
Eyes red and tender
from years of incessant tears;
Years,
of alternating elation and despair,
ominous arrivals, and
torturous departures.
*
Seating on the windowsill;
Gazing at the stars with tear-filled eyes…
Her belly,
accentuated by the night’s full moon.
Abiku stirs within.
Maybe she’ll stay this time;
Maybe.
© by Charles O.
if u haven’t already done so, i recommend that u read The Famished Road by Ben Okri. U will enjoy its capture of the abiku subject.
I’ve heard about Ben Okri (Mike Okri’s elder brother) and The Famished Road, but I haven’t read the book yet… Now that it comes recommended, I should check it out.
(By the way, Wole Soyinka has also written something—in prose or poetry—on the Abiku subject, hasn’t he? Do you know what it’s called?)
The book is Ake: The Years of Childhood. you can also check some of my works on my blog site, che-e-ly.blogspot.com. i just started i up.
cheers.
(i have a problem presenting the poems the way i wrote them because the page deletes all double spacing and puts up some generic format. Can you help? ‘am a mugu at some IT things)
How very coincidental! Having been on my Amazon.com “Wish List” for over a year, I finally ordered and received Ake, last week! I’ll check out your blog in short order…
About the spacing thing, does Blogger allow you to edit the page’s underlying HTML? If so, then perhaps you want to use “
” (the entity used to represent a “non-breaking” space in HTML) for each space you’d like to include in your text…Or… you could just defect to WordPress…
[...] Read the Poem, Abiku, by Charles E. [...]
By the way, I just finished reading Soyinka’s Ake, today. What an thrill! Soyinka’s power of evocation borders on the divine. And, to be honest, I have never had the need to consult a dictionary so many times while reading a book. The vastness of the man’s vocabulary is almost scary.
And, yes, the other thing: Soyinka writes about his Abiku neighbour/family friend… but there’s no poem on the subject… I was sure someone said he had a poem on Abiku…
I’ll write an entry on the book, shortly.
You should also try to read the original poem, written in the 50s. For some reason it is hard to get a hold of. But yes - the poem does definetly exist. It is simply entitled - “Abiku”. Powerful!
wole soyinka actually wrote a poem on Abiku and that is the title as well.