Sunday, August 9, 2020

Welcome to Sadiq Mustapha

 

 
 
Tonight I'd like to post a poem that the Nigerian poet Sadiq Mustapha recently sent me.  I must also add that Sadiq has stopped by some of my poetry group's events on Zoom this summer.  I hope that he will be able to read some of his poetry to us before we return to face to face meetings.
 
Lost tongue of displaced bodies 

on the day it started my mother's 
laughter grew into a wail 
 her old transistor radio carried 
the message of the end
the one that has her lover's name on 
time's book and has turned her into a 
whole city of treasured memories

we read
aloud from a postcolonial love  poem 
to find our displaced bodies, lost languange, 
diminished love, to over come the mind's civic unrest 
and the violence of a pandemic: 

my mother losses her tongue to grief; 
sadness has a way of stealing sanity


we went to the hospital
my aunt's daughter is in coma
but, hospitals are arbitrary abattoirs where women 
are slain at childbirth

she woke from death to meet coma, 
womb damaged and removed
after childbirth. 

the next day
the new child died
of breathing infection 
no machine to aid. 

still she is in coma, 
we held prayers for her soul to unite 
with her body, burnt incenses and danduwala 
to chase hanging spirts 
Yet she floats in coma. 

loss is violence 
it butchers the heart into chunks of meat 
we are displaced by these losses: 
each making us a lost colony of grief.  

there is a lockdown
there is venting
there is the world gasping for air through ventilators
 
stomachs searching for fill 
the numbers are multiplying and death is, deftly having it way 

we have consumed more grief than we have consumed food 
my mother switches off her radio
she no longer want to hear anymore of death.
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Author's note:
The word Danduwala is not an English word. It is a name of a perfume used in the northern Nigerian to exorcise djins (spirits)  
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Tonight I'd like to play some Nigerian jazz from YouTube.    The first is actually a performance in NYC by Kaleta and Zem Audu: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5lJS8pTN8E
 
 "Sweet Mother" is a popular song.  Here it's performed by Prince Nico Mbarga, Jr. and Rocafil Jazz: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9TGZftpGVo
 
Jazz guitarist Femi Leye plays at the 2015 Lagos Jazz Festival: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SbocB9YuUyY
 
I'll finish with piano jazz by Dapo Dina: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4osUq26BCDU
 

 

2 comments:

  1. marianne this piece of poetry is very moving .I rea d and reread. the more i read the more it touched at my heart strings l .Thank you MR.Sadiq Mustapha for writing such a touching poem .The poem left me reflecting about the trials we as a society are facing during this trying time.thank you marianne for posting .

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