On Returning 'Home'

Issue 12

In the asteroid belt is my 'home', disturbed greatly
that I had been away and alone like the prodigal son,
thinking that I must have been
captured by the gravity of Mars in my quest for a better
breathing space in the severe atmosphere, until it was clear
that I had been to the capital city, working.
 
Mother wept. The next thing was to set the benches for
the Umunna, the kinsmen, to hear why I am not yet married at thirty five,
why I don't want to help myself with a helper at thirty five,
why I am not bothered about it at thirty five
—a man, healthy, young for that matter.
 
Tufia! she cursed during the time of questioning,
and suspicions, just because I made it clear that I rose at
six and hurried for my bed at six to avoid the fury of
the CEO who had forbidden us from coming a minute late
and from telling tales to support it as we come to work.
 
Now I have been cited to stand before my father's
blood, my blood, some of whom my father called father.
 
In silence, I stood with my hands behind me, although I am
not a criminal. I am the unusual child, the one they
could not understand, now at thirty five. The oldest man did not
agree with me that there was a slim time in my life in town,
that there was anything like a slim time in any young man's life,
that there will ever be a time when a young man will have a slim time.
And so he succedded in making others think that there
was rather no penis where they were thinking there was one.
 
They laughed out loud, like traders cheating heavily in
an open market place, raising their legs in the air,
as they chewed the stockfish that mother had cooked them,
pointing at the location of my penis, my ironed black
jeans, and tugged blue shirt, which were not voluminous like theirs,
my two hands almost in my trousers pockets as I fixed my
eyes on my heavy shoes before the laughing elders.
 
Who would not feel pushed to the wall by the laughter of the world?
 
They were laughing at me, pointing their fingers,
and their walking sticks at me—the old men sitting together.
Who would not feel pushed to the wall by the laughter of the world?
And so I made to walk out on the old men of the kindred, all
of them in red caps of honour, sitting on the benches in front of our house.
But it is an abomination to do this, to walk out on the elderly--
however severe one's madness. After all, my father has died,
and there is no one to restrain them if they should charge
towards me for disrespecting the entire population. Why should I put
a pillar of fire on my head? I would love to grow old like all of them,
and would not like to be walked out on. Will anything
happen to me if I stand, even though I am convulsed
with rage, because I am being shamed for nothing?
 
The youngest of the old men rose to his feet, smiling
satisfactorily: If you don't want us to laugh at you, enyi ya
(my dear) why don't you come home from that city with a woman
and your children? Bride price or no bride price, why not
impregnate a woman over there, and come back with her
or without her? See your muscle, so broad as if you are here to
beat up the entire town or to command it into doom.
And you are thirty five, happily working in the city where everything
is possible, now without a woman by your side, none
that you have had or impregnated somewhere known to anyone,
even during your years of studies at the University of Nigeria.
No, something is wrong! And you alone know what it is.
Tell it to your mother whatever it is.
She can hear my voice from this window behind us.
Tell her what your problem is. She will tell us.
Then you will know we are men.
 

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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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