Odia Ofeimun

(Exactly ten years after the British High Commission denied me a visa to enjoy a facility provided by the British Council to see the London Book Fair, and then relented, only for General Abachaís' goons to seize my passport, my visa application was rejected again, this time, with a sticker on my passport, which says ‘he claims to be a writer' . . . )
I do not claim to be, I am a writer
as my passport insists
across decades, and still counting,
drawing humus from Year Twelve
when school bells added my name
to the throng gambolling along
with the Pied Piper of Hamelin
and, the Ancient Mariner
whose magic, and the bamboo flutes
of Martin Carter in Guyana jail,
took me by hand to know Ogun,
when Okigbo's road was famished.

I do not claim to be, I am a writer
as the crow flies, thrillingly sure
though the syllabus of errors
at the British High Commission
may set no column for my stripe
after mourned deaths of the mother
my waify poems at eighteen
elevate siblings at the WAEC
stocking ten-legged thesis
on muses who bring the unborn
to quaking life before stamps
hit the pad at the Passport Office.

I do not claim to be, I am a writer
whose trip under African skies
took Sun-dance to Sadler's Well,
queen Elizabeth hall by the Thames,
and fleet street of glancing nods
with poesy of the body's rhythm
rounding the Cape of Good Hope
and toasting five hundred years
above visa-gripe and truth's fibre,
as art for life vouchsafes it,
setting navel closer to navel
to keep fellow-feeling in grace.

I do not claim to be, I am a writer
guerrilla-happy in unhappy times
pacing the common morality
of truth tougher than fear
and blood oaths segmenting worlds
and stalling the muse of spines
whose fist, raised in salute
to commonsense of hearts
to defeat spite and lucre
and the division of spoils
encumbering the earth with visas

I do not claim to be, I am a writer
beyond the prisonhouse of English
in which I wrest my djinns
I've crossed borders into Urdu,
and fished in the dialects of Rilke
world-round to tip my lagoon
in homage to Neruda's Spanish
I've returned gifts to Montale
wherever my English envy
denies a tongue its entry,
I'm happy, beyond mere fashion
for trips that visas can't deny
...

You have heard it said before
that poetry makes now water jump
blows not the wind it divines
builds no pyramids nor does it
repair bridges to start anything fresh.

Yet in the common tongue of those
who love to feel terror of survival
the survival of mouth as mouth alone
the worshiped word is enough
to expiate crimes and to lay honour
upon whom the pleaded grace of song has fallen.

So to save culture, they save a little risk
for those who obey no laws of gravity
outsiders to pain for whom murder will pass
no more handle to the flutist;
they fly only where the executives
would never want to tamper. Where?
The described becomes the prescribed
you have heard it said before.

So while they celebrate themselves
for holy ineffectuality
and seek the freedom of the ostrich
to bury their heads in the sands
let us praise those who will banish poets
from the People's Republic.

Let us praise them who know
what pagan fire can come
from waterfalls denied the lie of valleys
those who have seen gods crumble to their knees
questioned by simple images
so let us praise those who will track down
folksongs with police dogs
they will not live with poets
in the People's Republic
...