Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Notes on Contributors
- Introduction: Itinerariesof African Ecocriticism and Environmental Transformations in African Literature
- Literary Totemism and its Relevance for Animal Advocacy: A Zoocritical Engagement with Kofi Anyidoho’s Literary Bees
- Reading for Background: Suyi Davies Okungbowa’s David Mogo, Godhunter and ‘the end of the world as we know it’
- Poetics of Landscape: Representation of Lagos as a ‘Modernizing’ City in Nigerian Poetry
- Poetic Style and Anthropogenic Ecological Adversity in Steve Chimombo’s Poems
- Female Autonomy in Kaine Agary’s Yellow-Yellow
- Local Collisions: Oil on Water, Postcolonial Ecocriticism, and the Politics of Form
- ‘It is the Writer’s Place to Stand with the Oppressed’: Anthropocene Discourses in John Ngong Kum Ngong’s Blot on the Landscape and The Tears of the Earth
- Black Atlantic Futurism, Toxic Discourses and Decolonizing the Anthropocene in Nnedi Okorafor’s The Book of Phoenix
- Readings into the Plantationocene: From the Slave Narrative of Charles Ball to the Speculative Histories of Octavia Butler and Nnedi Okorafor
- INTERVIEW
- LITERARY SUPPLEMENT
- TRIBUTE
- REVIEWS
‘Man is Dead’ (Poem)
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 November 2020
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Notes on Contributors
- Introduction: Itinerariesof African Ecocriticism and Environmental Transformations in African Literature
- Literary Totemism and its Relevance for Animal Advocacy: A Zoocritical Engagement with Kofi Anyidoho’s Literary Bees
- Reading for Background: Suyi Davies Okungbowa’s David Mogo, Godhunter and ‘the end of the world as we know it’
- Poetics of Landscape: Representation of Lagos as a ‘Modernizing’ City in Nigerian Poetry
- Poetic Style and Anthropogenic Ecological Adversity in Steve Chimombo’s Poems
- Female Autonomy in Kaine Agary’s Yellow-Yellow
- Local Collisions: Oil on Water, Postcolonial Ecocriticism, and the Politics of Form
- ‘It is the Writer’s Place to Stand with the Oppressed’: Anthropocene Discourses in John Ngong Kum Ngong’s Blot on the Landscape and The Tears of the Earth
- Black Atlantic Futurism, Toxic Discourses and Decolonizing the Anthropocene in Nnedi Okorafor’s The Book of Phoenix
- Readings into the Plantationocene: From the Slave Narrative of Charles Ball to the Speculative Histories of Octavia Butler and Nnedi Okorafor
- INTERVIEW
- LITERARY SUPPLEMENT
- TRIBUTE
- REVIEWS
Summary
I
I am just an old man
Caught in a revolution
That makes my mind to
Wonder and ponder
What my children will be –
After I should have cross
Sowe's gate never to return –
Without the sweet
Melodies of the birds,
Without the frightening beauties
Of snakes seeking
The fowl and eggs for
A sumptuous daily delicacy.
Shall these ones know
When rain comes and when
The sun comes?
The confusion is right
Here in front
Of me as I set out with
An umbrella and the
Sun almost melts my flesh.
I get out only the next
Day without an umbrella
And the rain soaks me
To shivering points.
Where has the forest gone?
Can sky-scrapers shelter like the forest?
II
Man is dead;
Nature now fights
From hurricane to mount Fako
Quarrelling and reminding west
Africa of her great authority
Where Epasa Moto along
With the spirits at Oku
And Boyo demonstrate their majesty.
Man is dead;
The sacred voice's order
And ordination to stewardship
Never meant destruction.
Man is dead;
The refusal of birds to sing,
The rain and sun confusion
Only plunges man to object
Of pity.
III
Holes were made
For rats and snakes
To abode.
Stones beneath
Were made to
Beautify and to hold
The foundations of the earth.
Man. Your digging of holes
In search of stones and liquid
Has shaken the foundation
Of the earth. And Fako
And Oku and Boyo
And Nyos and the twin lakes
Are speaking and you are deaf.
Deaf to Mongo's mournful flow;
Lamenting the history of a people
Stricken by violence and hate.
IV
God created the earth,
It was beautiful.
He gave man for stewardship.
Man decided to know
More than his creator.
The creator has given man
His most cherished peace,
And man has ruined the earth –
All alone
And instead of returning
To God for help,
He now blames God
For ordaining him with stewardship powers.
V
Man! What a creature?
And sure all other creatures are
Pondering like me.
Nature's shelter shall prevail
And my children's children
Will enjoy the songs from
The forest and feel
The taste and the feel
Of the scintillating sun rays
Clad in the many
Colours of the rainbow.
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- Information
- ALT 38 Environmental TransformationsAfrican Literature Today, pp. 153 - 156Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2020