Surprise! We will have a wonderful, award-winning and much acclaimed, 90-odd-year-old poet from Nigeria to read for about 20 minutes at our Sept. 17 meeting. Mary Ellen Letarte, an MSPS member, met him at a reading in north central Massachusetts, loved him, and arranged this great treat for us.

Also on Sept. 17 we will be joined by a poet from England, Bill Grimke-Drayton, who has interesting roots that spread to either side of the Atlantic and across the Mason-Dixon line. He happened to see this blog and started to comment and write. See more about him at grimke.wordpress.com. He is staying in Andover and wants to know if there are any open mic readings in the area. Does anyone know of any? Please send them along.

Here is info sent by Mary Ellen about Gabriel Imomotimi Gbaingbain Okara, who is staying in the U.S. for a little while with his son on the South Shore. The bio is followed by three of his poems.
Okara (b.1921) has made a mark on the African literary scene as one of the major pioneer African writers. In his tenth decade of life, he is still writing. Born in Bomoundi, Bayelsa State, Nigeria, Okara is the first renowned English-language black African poet and the first African modernist writer. The Nigerian Negritudist, as he is fondly called, began his writing career in 1940 at Government College, Umuahia. By 1960 he had made a name as the first Nigerian writer to publish in the influential literary journal, Black Orpheus and to join its editorial staff. Subsequently his The Call of the River Nun won the best award for literature in the Nigeria Festival of Arts in 1953. In 1979 his Fisherman’s Invocation won the Commonwealth Poetry Prize. And in 2005 he bagged the highest literary prize in Nigeria, NLNG Prize, instituted by the Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas.

ONCE UPON A TIME

by Gabriel Okara, a Nigerian Poet

Once upon a time, son,

they used to laugh with their hearts

and with their eyes:

but now they only laugh with their teeth,

while their ice-block-cold eyes

search behind my shadow.

….

There was a time indeed

they used to shake hands with their hearts:

but that’s gone son.

Now they shake hands without hearts:

while their left hands search

my empty pockets

….

‘Feel at home’! ‘Come again’:

they say, and when I come

again and feel

at home, once, twice,

there will be no thrice ­–

for then I find doors shut on me.

….

So I have learned many things, son.

I have learned to wear many faces

like dresses — homeface,

officeface, streetface,  hostface,

cocktailface, with all their conforming smiles

like a fixed portrait smile.

And I have learned too

to laugh with only my teeth

and shake hands without my heart.

I have also learned to say ‘Goodbye’,

when I mean ‘Good – riddance’;

to say ’Glad to meet you’,

without being glad; and to say ‘It’s been

nice talking to you’, after being bored.

….

But believe me, son.

I want to be what I used to be

when I was like you. I want

to unlearn all these muting things.

Most of all, I want to relearn

how to laugh, for my laugh in the mirror

shows only my teeth like a snake’s bare fangs!

….

So show me, son

how to laugh; show me how

I used to laugh and smile

once upon a time when I was like you.

You Laughed And Laughed And Laughed

by Gabriel Okara

In your ears my song

is motor car misfiring

stopping with a choking cough;

and you laughed and laughed and laughed.

…

In your eyes my ante-

natal walk was inhuman, passing

your ‘omnivorous understanding’

and you laughed and laughed and laughed

….

You laughed at my song,

you laughed at my walk.

Then I danced my magic dance

to the rhythm of talking drums pleading, but

you shut your eyes and laughed and

laughed and laughed.

….

And then I opened my mystic

inside wide like the sky,

instead you entered your

car and laughed and laughed and laughed.

….

You laughed at my dance,

you laughed at my inside,

You laughed and laughed and laughed

….

But your laughter was ice-block

laughter and it froze your inside froze

your voice froze your ears

froze your eyes and froze your tongue.

….

And now it’s my turn to laugh;

but my laughter is not

ice-block laughter. For I

know not cars, know not ice-block.

My laughter is the fire

of the eye of the sky, the fire

of the earth, the fire of the air,

the fire of the seas and the

rivers fishes animals trees

and it thawed your inside,

thawed your voice, thawed your

ears, thawed your eyes and

thawed your tongue.

…

So a meek wonder held

your shadow and you whispered;

‘Why so?’

And I answered:

‘Because my father and I

are owned by the living

warmth of the earth

through our naked feet.’

PIANO AND DRUMS

by Gabriel Okara

When at break of day at a riverside

I hear the jungle drums telegraphing

the mystic rhythm, urgent, raw

like bleeding flesh, speaking of

primal youth and the beginning

I see the panther ready to pounce

the leopard snarling about to leap

and the hunters crouch with spears poised;

….

And my blood ripples, turns torrent,

topples the years and at once I’m

in my mother’s lap a sucking;

at once I’m walking simple

paths with no innovations,

rugged, fashioned with the naked

warmth of hurrying feet and groping hearts

in green leaves and wild flowers pulsing.

….

Then I hear a wailing piano

solo speaking of complex ways in

tear-furrowed concerto;

of far away lands

and new horizons with

coaxing diminuendo, counterpoint,

crescendo. But lost in the labyrinth

of its complexities, it ends in the middle

of a phrase at a daggerpoint.

…

And I lost in the morning mist

of an age at a riverside keep

wandering in the mystic rhythm

of jungle drums and the concerto