After Orgoniland*
Can I still picture home, in the wreckage of things?
… The dying of fish and everything aquatic. That water
… is oil, that another name for
… nostalgia is time.
Can I still teach myself how to forget? The story is
… that the befouled river still remains. My mother who
… is now blind, still trades. Biscuits,
… not periwinkles.
It’s early summer and hard to tell what is sky and what is
… gas flare. Into the horizon, the air is toxic, and
… my only surviving uncle keeps licking franol to relieve
… his lung. How long was it? Does the world even read our
… ugly stories, does my country even know we
… exist?
I have forgotten we’re so minor, not even close to
redemption, children keeping warm oily waters, a pillow
… for their trauma. Distant but soft and cozy.
… Present but soiled. This land rid of all
… her innocence.
|
This land full of dirt and broken pipes. Still I dream. Still I am curious.
… Still I want to say: O glorious creeks,
… born into a cold marshland.
There is no love greater
than empathy. As fisher-boys, we were brought into the creek,
… and told that water is life, and as such we
… should keep it clean.
by Ojo Taiye
from The Poetry Archive, 2022
*Ogoniland is situated in the Niger Delta region, the third largest
mangrove ecosystem in the world.