Okigbo: Beyond the Riddle of Knowing by James Tar Tsaaior

Okigbo: Beyond the Riddle of Knowing

I know you. Without knowing you.
        The cotyledons of your poetic voice
Tore through the crust of humanity's conscience
        And conquered time and space
Before the seminal thought that incarnated me
        Traveled to the waiting ovary. My foetus.

I know you. Yet I do not know you.
        We met. During your famed tryst
With the goddess of poetry in your filial devotion
        At Mother Idoto's watery shrine.
Since, your poetic rites have held me hostage
        And sojourned in my restless, wrestling mind.

The large testaments you distilled
        With the tong of your leavened tongue;
The anvil and sledgehammer of your circumcised mind
        Have moulded nubile images in the caverns
Of our serrated, wounded and whimpering memories.
        But alas. You hugged the portentous leopard-skin
War drums and followed the path of thunder
        And embraced the streaks of lightning
A votive sacrifice to an unknown and unknowable
        Greedy god that has refused to be immolated.

You still are the burden of our creaking boulder
        Town crier, still announcing the adolescent dawn
Like the muezzin-cockerel. You still proclaim, prophet
        In apocalyptic accents the crime of the stolen dream.

Now, I know you. Beyond the riddle of knowing.
Your haunting metaphors.
Your seductive similes.
Your pregnant tropes.
Eternal graffiti etched
On the nudity of a textured lives.

James Tar Tsaaior

James Tsaaior is an Associate Professor, is the chairman of the Mass Media and Writing Department, School of Media and Communication, Pan- African University, Lagos, and Director of Academic Planning at the university, where he teaches creative writing and media studies. He was a visiting research fellow, Centre of African Studies, University of Cambridge, UK.