The Soup We Must Not Name Poem by Martins Akhoeneto

(an Ancestral Taboo Elegy)

In Asaba, even hunger
lowers its voice.

There is a seed
whose name crosses the lips
like a thief through moonlight
without ancestral leave.

Ogbono.

A brown syllable
heavy with the dead.

They say our fathers
once gathered beneath old trees
and history happened there
not in books,
but in blood;
not in ink,
but in an oath
older than remembrance.

So we inherited silence.

We learnt:
some foods are not food;
some names are not names;
some things, once swallowed,
wake the dead.

And the pot
that dark mouth of fire
must sometimes remain empty.

Elsewhere, ogbono
falls into boiling water,
releases its resin,
and teaches the soup
the grammar of binding.

Here,
we hold ourselves
by refusing it.

What power is this
that a seed becomes a boundary,
a meal, a memorial,
an absence still seated
at the table?

Perhaps our ancestors
did not forbid a seed.

Perhaps they buried
a warning in it.

Perhaps every generation
inherits one mystery
it must not solve.

So when the market quiets
and the Niger carries dusk
past Asaba,

I will not ask
why the seed is forbidden.

I will listen.

For beneath silence,
beneath the pot,
beneath the tongue
that refuses its name,

the old warning
is still stirring

and the dead,
who have forgotten language,
are stirring the soup.