THIS SON OF A FOREIGN GOD

ADEPOJU ISAIAH GBENGA

(I)

Dear Son,

When the gods asked me who you were, I said;

You are like a hawk that flew to the land of doves

And when returned, became a dove.

Like a stranger;

When the Abiku’s child, Romoke, lifted her feet off the earth,

Your mouth opened like a crushed hut felled by the wind.

You looked like Sigidi, as night-children sneaked into your home and stole the ancestral god of our forefathers.

“It ain’t worth a dime,” you said and the walls of the village broke in tears,

The farmers hung their hoes and stayed in their compound until the flood of their tears soiled their farms and replenished their barns.

Our farm produce became lean and when we slashed our poor yams, we saw its eyes swollen like the lump of the Adam’s apple of a glutton.

The gong of the town refused to sound;

When beaten, it muffled like a mummified corpse:

It wallows in sorrow.

Son!

Haven’t you missed the nuptial tie ceremony of this land?

The heavy smell of gegemu filling the air;

The rising and falling of the bride’s wailing as several dishes are pounded and cooked.

Why do you choose to dress your wife like an embalmed corpse waiting to be buried?

Why do you dress like Esu Odaara himself that kills the infant at the presence of the Mother when you are supposed to be tying the nuptial knot?

(II)

Father!

Your ways are sin unto God, and as you file after idols and molded figures

Your hell is being heated seven times minus one.

Have you dreamt of a palace that smelt of purple and frankincense and myrrh?

Of a place where Amadioha cannot come with fierce lightning wiping sinners off this sphere?

Where I was!

The land is thick with life and when we walked, a sound repeats our steps.

Papa! I wish not to dwell longer in this hollowed pit;

Where I can’t touch the walls without the guilt of innumerable sacrifices clinging unto my palm,

Where the dust of the earth is full of treachery and misdeeds.

Where fathers who had laid to rest in their dungeons or caves have their share in the fire that burns even the dead.

(III)

Ancestors!

Ancient Fathers!

Merciful ones!

Forgive thy child who in ignorance had rendered blasphemy unto thy name.

Since when the white man promised my son the night of the golden stars, he had come with puffed up shoulders and had abandoned the honour of his land and had chased after the gods of a strange land.

GLOSSARY

Abiku – (according to Yoruba mythology) a problem child that returns into its mother’s womb after its early death

Romoke – Yoruba name given to females

Gegemu – a powerful alcoholic greenish, pea-like plant

Esu Odaara – devil

Amadiora – a fierce Igbo god of thunder.

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ADEPOJU ISAIAH GBENGA

is a teen writer from Osun State, Nigeria. He started writing two years ago, starting with his first unpublished novel, I Came, I Saw and a work-in-progress American-African novel, A Soothsayer in a Civil World. He’s the fourth of a family of five, and most of the poems, plays and prose he has written surround ‘pure’ darkness. He’s a member of Association of Nigerian Authors, Osun State Chapter. Creative Arts Foundation, Minna, Osun State Coordinator of Hill Top Creative Arts Foundation, Minna. An editor at Writers Global Movement, Nigeria Chapter, he believes that man is an object who decides whether to live in the subjection of tradition and spirituality or not. His view is fermented in the very fabrics of his American-African novel.