THE POEM BOOK

TWO POEMS ON EVIDENCE AND DOUBT

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ODIA OFEIMUN
I am a writer

(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 Abacha's 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

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TPB's notes: Listen to poet reading poem here: http://badilishapoetry.com/radio/odia-ofeimun/ Top note is poet's own note provided on the badilisha page: (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"…) To order Odia Ofeimun's book: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3879732-the-poet-lied-and-other-poems

FERNANDOA PESSOA
The Uncollected Poems of Alberto Caeiro

All theories, all poems
Last longer than this flower.
But that's like mist, which is uncomfortable and damp,
And larger than this flower...
The size and lastingness aren't important...
They're only size and lastingness...
What matters is that the flower lasts and has size
(If reality is the true dimension of things)...
Being real is the only true thing in the world.

Does my verse make sense if the universe doesn't make sense?
In geometry does a part exceed the whole?
In biology does the function of the organs
Have more life than the body?

From afar I see a ship go by...
Drift indifferently down the river Tagus.
Indifferent not for paying me no attention,
I don't feel distressed by that...
It's indifferent because it has no sense at all
Outside of the simple nautical fact
Of its going downriver with no reference to anything beyond that...
Downriver toward the reality of the sea.

Truth, untruth, certainty, uncertainty...
That blind man there in the road also knows these words.
I sit on a high step and have placed my hands
On top of my knee which I've crossed over the other.
So then: truth, untruth, certainty, uncertainty, what are they?
The blind man stops in the road,
I remove my hands from the top of my knee.
Truth, untruth, certainty, uncertainty, are they the same?
Something changed in one part of reality – my knees and my hands.
Which science has an understanding of this?
The blind man continues on his way and I make no more gestures.
Already time is not the same, nor people the same, nor anything the same.
Being real is this.

So I pass cleanly to Matter
To restore in its rightful place what mankind has disarranged
For its true purpose wasn't noticed.
I straighten out, like Reality's good housewife,
The curtains in the windows of Sensation
The doormats at the doors of Perception
And sweep the rooms of observation
Cleaning the dust off of simple ideas...
This is my life, from verse to verse.

I take joy in the fields without looking at them.
You ask me why I take joy in them.
Because I take joy in them, I answer.
To take joy in a flower is to be beside it unconsciously
And have a notion of its scent in our vaguest thoughts.
When I look, I don't take joy: I see.
I close my eyes, and my body, that's on the grass,
Belongs completely to the outside of someone who closes their eyes –
Before the firm freshness of the fragrant and uneven earth;
And to some of the indistinct sounds of things that exist,
And only a shadow formed of light pulses gently on my lids,
And only a trace of life is heard.

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TPB's notes: The 1st of today's 'long poem' day - in no particular order.
To be honest, we have not read this poem through-. let us know what you think? 

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