Chris Okigbo

If there is one person that inspired me into poetry, his name is Chris Okigbo. I stumbled on a book in my father's little book collection by Sunday Anozie titled Christopher Okigbo: Creative Rhetoric and though barely 12 years then and barely totally understand the full meaning of some of his poems, I was hooked to his works. Chris Okigbo was killed in action during a major push by Nigerian troops against Nsukka during the Nigerian Civil war.

I have reproduced some of his works that I loved below.


The Passage - Christopher Okigbo

BEFORE YOU, my mother Idoto,
Naked I stand;
Before your weary presence,
A prodigal
Leaning on an oilbean,
Lost in your legend
Under your power wait I
On barefoot,
Watchman for the watchword
At heavensgate;
Out of the depth my cry:
Give ear and hearken…
DARK WATERS of the beginning.
Ray, violet,and short, piercing the gloom,
Foreshadow the fire that is dreamed of.
Me to the orangery
Solitude invites,
A wagtail, to tell
The tangled-wood-tale;
A sunbird, to mourn
A mother on spray.
Rain and sun in single combat;
On one leg standing,
In silence at the passage
The young bird at the passage
SILENCE FACES at crossroads:
Festivity in black…
Column of ants,
Behind the bell tower,
Into the hot garden
Where all roads meet:
Festivity in black…
O Anan at the knob of the panel oblong,
Hear us at crossroads at the great hinges
Where the players of loft organ
Rehearse old lovely fragment, alone-
Strains of pressed orange leaves on pages
Bleach of the light of years held in leather:
For we are listening in cornfields
Among the windplayers,
Listening to the wind leaning over
Its loveliest fragment…..



Excerpt of his "Elegy for Alto"

THE GLIMPSE OF A DREAM
lies smouldering in a cave,
together with the mortally wounded birds.
Earth, unbind me;
let me be the prodigal;
let this bethe ram’s ultimate prayer to the tether…

AN OLD STAR departs,
leaves us on the shore
Gazing heavenward for a new star approaching;
The new star appears, foreshadows its going
Before a going and coming that goes on forever…