Movers, Old and New

Issue 12

Movers, old and new: we are petrol of energy
for the tires of time running to get to the sun;
the sun tearing the heavy dawn to get to me.
 
I am the figure revealed now, facing the old wall,
where there is the picture of an ancestor of mine
honored long ago for being a rainmaker--
a soul who had manipulated the sky to begin to rain,
and to withhold the rains whenever he wanted it,
returning satisfaction to those who paid him to do it either
to torment their enemies in an outdoor ceremonies
or to keep their happiness intact as they celebrate
at the open places in the rainy season.
 
What will I have become if I had inherited this art from him?
 
I am sure I wouldn't have been where he was.
I would have relocated to a desert, where I would
manipulate the sky with his soft incantations to rain there until
all kinds of trees and other animals are hypnotized to occupy it.
The honor wouldn't have been a long eagle feather
in a long red cap, as my ancestor had it. It would have been
the magic of fresh breezes, animals in a new environment
quite unsure of their left and their right hand sides.
 
I will be amused by their confusion, not the swirling waists
of the dancer-damsels possessed by the beating drums
in the ceremony honored with gunshots in honor of the rainmaker.
A ripe fruit falling from a gigantic tree, as
my thunderstorm begin to honor the environment,
and the smaller powerful honey badger reaping the earth
in the circumstance, might even terrorize
a group of leopards, tigers, jaguars, and the rest, since this
environment is new on earth, all to my crazy delight
 
—what my ancestor must have had when he held an elephant tusk,
the symbol of strength, massive strength, unmatched confidence,
while sitting on a royal-leopard hide spread on a stool of honor
by the community as the hunters returned home with music
and the kill—unbelievable numbers, including young and pregnant
members killed by the mesmerized weapon owners—laid at his feet
to drive home the worth of the honor in the great ceremony.
I would have been a big disappointment to him, especially as
I run after a baby deer or something like it to cuddle in my arms,
or as I stand to sympathize with a pregnant mother
pushing forward in the wild where anything could happen to anything;
and he might even be the one to summon up able men, arm them,
order them to search and drag me out of the jungle that I have made,
and tie me up to a tree branch, or slit my throat slowly
until death honors itself slowly in my animalistic life
 
because my life lacked honors, since it was the same as those of
the beasts and the wild jungle with which I have identified,
sympathizing with them. His tusk of authority is still nailed to the wall,
the tusk from the community which he held to his satisfaction
and to the satisfaction of the people whom he served with his powers,
unlike my greatest joy serving me alone—books on physical
and emotional realities—all that I was mandated to read at
the University of Nigeria, lying in the big and mini shelves
nailed to the wall, far neater than the bags of charms and fond troubles,
the ones with which the sky was manipulated to rain and to
withhold the rain whenever my ancestor
rendered his poignant incantations, his metal gong being beaten
slowly and steadily by him, and huge smoke
—the great messenger to the sky—rising
from the special logs that he had gathered and lit himself.

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Anthony Ogbonnaya Chukwu is a Nigerian poet. He has published "Memphis," and "Corollary," two collections of poems, plus individual works published in different places. 

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