Letters To And Fro: Poem By Ohikhuare Isuku

My son,

The sun is falling,
The fowls are heading
To their roost,
The market is going dry,
The goats are bleating hard
For fear of darkness,
Yet the oyin nuts
I spread out to receive
The heat of the sun,
There is no child here to
Pack them in,

The evening dew will moist them
And make them rot.

I have no more strength
For such task.
That sun setting,
Has drained my last strength,
And left me dry like
The bamboo tinder in harmattan,
It will set with my strength,
And tomorrow,
When it rises,
It will forget it in its cellar.

Time has sped,
As it has always done,
And the dust it lifts up
Has sprinkled on my skin,
Making me look grey and old.

I who once
Strode the town with strength,
Balance the fire-pot on
My head during
The new Yam Festival,
My face rubbed with powdered charcoal,
The muscles of my arms
Throbbed to the rhythm
Of my Isi-iso dance.

I who when my father died –
The greatest hunter of this clime
Who hunted the bulls,
And danced the Iyoko dance
Several times,
In the admiration
Of the full-moon,
I wore his  hunting regalia,
During the New Yam Festival,
Took his Dane gun,
Danced on the wide road,
Poised the gun
Aiming an imaginary game.

I was the prince of women;
The one with the
Charming eyes.
They crowded me
As flies buzz around
Wine froth.

They held my hands,
Twiddled their buttocks
In the winds
In the full gaze of the moon,
And pulled me
Into the silhouettes
Of the banana trees.

Once there,
They made me feel
My warm palm
Around their breasts -
Soft like tufted wool.

Youth was life -
Age destroyed our mastery.  

Our mastery in hunting,
Dancing to flex
Our athletic built,

Causing the maidens

To twine their waists
In oblivion.

My face are charred,
My limbs are weak
As of a new-born.

And in this year end
When I set
To wave into darkness,
I thought
Of all these memories,
Stale like abandoned wine,
And wished
I am transported into time
To where they
Lie useless
Like old car-hulks.

But life has its own bidding,
Its own old ways
That lifts the flesh
From your bones
And makes you
Bleed like a cow.
If one doesn’t follow his rule,
Will he not roar loud
And cause one’s ancestors
To tears?
Who would wish
His ancestors tears
If not a fat fool?

Hence, we must remain mute
Like the goat tied
In the cold
While time brings his
Sharp sword towards us
To slit our throats.
We are his sacrifice;

He feeds on our flesh
And taste from our blood
While he remains endless.

But my son,
My only born,

Even at this point
When my sun sets,
You are not here
To prepare my grave,
You’re across the great sea.