The Paint Poem by Martins Akhoeneto

There are men who leave footprints.
There are men who leave monuments.
But my father—
he became the colour that taught my soul
how to be seen.

I remember that evening in 2009,
when words wrestled like thunder
inside the auditorium of Delta State University.
Young poets hurled meteors of metaphors,
their tongues breathing wild constellations,
their verses setting the air ablaze
until silence itself began to sweat.

Then my name was summoned.

I climbed the stage
not as a man,
but as a son carrying an invisible inheritance.
My poem was 'My Father.'
Every syllable was a river returning home.
Every pause bowed before the altar
of the man who had first taught my heartbeat
the grammar of courage.

When the laurels had found deserving brows,
the judge looked beyond my poem
and searched my becoming.

'Martins, ' he asked,
'you wear medicine upon your shoulders,
yet poetry blooms in your breath.
If life commanded you to write your own story,
what would you write? '

The question became a mountain.

For one impossible moment,
my voice forgot the road to my lips.
Words—those faithful companions—
hid themselves inside a loud silence.
The fire I had carried
turned into a freezing flame;
an oxymoron only destiny could explain.

Then inspiration arrived—

not like a visitor,
but like dawn remembering the earth.

The Muse placed her warm hands upon my tongue.
Hope unfolded its wings.
Even silence smiled.

And I answered:

If ever I must tell the story of my life,
its first sentence will kneel before God
with thanksgiving.

If ever I must paint the portrait of my existence,
the brush will be grace,
the canvas will be time,
but the paint—

the paint will forever be
Akhor Eneto Emmanuel, my father.

For he is the palette
where integrity borrowed its colour,
where honour learnt to stand upright,
where wisdom first found a human voice,
where strength clothed itself in gentleness.

He mixed courage into my veins
like rain persuading a thirsty earth.
He carved discipline from ordinary mornings,
until even the sun seemed to rise
asking permission from his example.

I am not the masterpiece.

I am only the portrait.

He is the pigment.
The unseen artist beneath every visible stroke.
The root the tree never outgrows.
The quiet river
whose patient waters still carry my name.

If the world applauds my words,
it applauds an echo.

If it honours my character,
it honours a seed long before the harvest.

For I am merely a reflection
borrowing light from a greater lamp.

And when history finally asks
who taught the earth my name,

I shall point beyond myself—

to the man whose love painted my becoming,

the father

who made my life

a living work of art.