Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Afam Akeh: Letter to Soyinka

Pa Ikhide,

Afam is one of favorite poets-poignant, subtle, etc. My hope is to meet him in person...

-Funmi

On Jan 16, 2013, at 8:19 AM, Ikhide <xokigbo@yahoo.com> wrote:

Lovely piece. Afam is an awesome poet. Many thanks for sharing this.

 

- Ikhide

 

Stalk my blog at http://www.xokigbo.com/

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From: Funmi Tofowomo Okelola <cafeafricana1@aol.com>
To: Funmi Tofowomo Okelola <cafeafricana1@aol.com>
Sent: Tuesday, January 15, 2013 11:07 PM
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Afam Akeh: Letter to Soyinka

http://www.cafeafricana.com/Poetry.html

http://www.mtls.ca/issue3/writings-poetry-akeh.php

Afam Akeh

Letter to Soyinka

The children of this land are old 
Their eyes are fixed on maps in place of land 
Their feet must learn to follow 
Distant contours traced by alien minds 
Their present sense has faded into past. 

(Wole Soyinka Samarkand and Other Markets I Have Known, 2002)

I am that brood of brats you haunt in verse. 
Some feet I know may never walk home.

They are alien to any land. 
Memory is not their friend.

They have lived many lives, 
are too many lies from childhood.

I am with my fellows less convinced. 
I have shit. And I dump.

I dump in poems. I dump on people. 
I dream of home and dump.

The world I walk is not your world. 
It has neither clarity nor empathy.

I don't attach. I detach. I am old at faking love. 
Not good to be this dry, without oil,

moisture, the old validations, lost in loss 
and its foggy sense of years.

Born to a land at war with its young 
I fled and still flee.

Not that I quit: I reclaim my stolen life. 
Not that I fall, but I wrestle with history.

And you know, you already do. 
You too have lived this dark. 

Your faithfulness unsettles me, 
this sacred trust, your love of land,

all your roads leading home, the homecomings 
never far from the departures.

What potion has your name on it? 
Is it the weather or women,

the gods that failed, 
Ogun the capricious, your avatar?

Is there divorce from a love 
that would make and also break?

What talent in your beard is counsel 
for my fellows this day of doubt?

For this much is our "present sense 
Love changed and we changed with it.

We who were never suckled, 
we play possum, play chameleon,

play dirty, and dump: refuge hunters, 
parallel lives with undead pasts,

breeding abroad unsettled by home. 
Distant. Defiant. Divided.

If we end as we have lived 
we will be buried away from you. 

Funmi Tofowomo 
--The art of living and impermanence. 

--
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