My sister, do no
think too far. It is in the tempestuous flow of our ever-evolving language. That
is what I told a young classroom. For I had asked for metaphors and been presented
with – ‘Peter is as strong as a lion’, ‘Mary had a little lamb whose fleece was
white as snow’. And I thought to myself – Really? Are they still using these
things to teach Poetry? Even when they know that none of these children has
seen any in real life – lion, lamb or snow? So, I laughed and said – Is that
how your mother insults you at home? Tell me, how does your mother insult you
at home? And one boy raised his hand and said – My mother always says, Why will
you never sit in one place, this boy? You chop dog leg? And I told him – That
is Poetry.
For how else
could I make him understand? Yes. How else can I make you understand, that
understanding is not the same thing as understanding the meaning of every word
I use? Not when the objective is to make you see – to see the darkness as I see
it, to force your hand up to your chest as if it was your own heart in danger
of breaking. For we are not so different, you and me. The same palpitations
wake you up too, like rain drops on a tin roof, or the low rumbling in the
distance – of fear, of relentless thoughts running tight circles in your head,
whispering, ‘You will not make it’, over and over again. Just that I sit up and
put them down, those things we both have say to ourselves to get out of bed in
the morning. Did you not know – written or whispered – that they are Poetry?
As are the
moments we wish would never end. Like the minutes before the rain catches up
with the wind, when it is just the trees at your window rustling in anticipation.
Tell me, how do you express the feeling? Of waiting for a storm? Of lying
beside a child and feeling her fall asleep to the disjointed sound of that your
join-join story? I tell you, that is why we cannot mind these people who go about
acting as if wealth is only ever something you can write a figure against in your
column for assets. How? When each of us has at least one memory of a moment we
wish had never ended. How?
So, do not think
of it as something Shakespeare wrote. My brother, look to the left. Then look to
the right. Now rub your eyes vigorously and try to see the things you see every
day – houses with fingers dug into the sides of the earth; children giggling beneath
dull trays of groundnut; women standing like rocks against the rain; men squashed
together in a small bus, laughing out loud as it puffs its way up a hill in
second gear. It is everywhere, this thing. True. You may search till tomorrow and
find not one person on a soapbox anywhere calling out – ‘Romeo, O Romeo,
wherefore at thou, O Romeo?’ – but this our Poetry? It is everywhere…
#AbujaNSW5 . Ladi
Kwali Hall. 800 seats. 1 mic.
