In three elegies as daring as they are poignant, winner of the Windhamn-Campbell Prize, Helon Habila pokes at loss and hope….
1.ELEGY FOR A CHILD
This is how the world ends:
First, all beauty will die –
All that is green and pure, all
That inspires, elevates; all talent, for beauty,
Like yours, child, is a great talent.
Then all courage will die – all hope,
All that keep the fires burning,
All that won’t be bowed, cowed – like
You, child, who smiled and smiled to the end.
After beauty, and laughter, and courage,
After the fishes in the sea,
After the leaves are variegated, and
The flowers blighted, when
All songs have ended, then the
World’s roof will cave in, because
When you left, dear child,
The world’s pillar also crumbled.
2. In Memoriam
(For Gabriel)
The sleepers rise with me at dawn
To gaze at the hills and the color splattered plains,
Green, red, brown—patterns in a magic mat
To fly home the wandering pilgrims
Traversers, conquerors, farmers, hunters, and women lighting the fires at dawn,
Setting free the smoke haze over kitchen thatch roofs,
Burnt offerings to spirits awaking, and birds chirping
And clouds stirring over the hilltops
They lock step with me, eager for one final adventure,
Feet a-clacking through living hallways, over byways, through back-ways
Of our happy days before the sun dimmed on the mirth-filled houses,
And foolishness and youthfulness and bygone days before dead days
Ghosts of lovers, come walk with me beneath weeping arcades of mahogany,
Down vanishing tracks of youth, and tamarind trees and superstitious shadows of
Childhood folly, and long nights carousing
And long walks to hours frittered away
Let the drums raise up the dead to talk again, to answer the phone-call, thrill to
Birdcall and the call of the hoary harmattan, to change with the seasons
And grow with the corn and the sorghum in the fields,
Proud saplings nourished by savannah rainfalls
The dead
Sleepless shadows on my wall,
Fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, cousins,
In waking dreams I reach out to lovers beyond reach, to shades of friends forgotten,
Figures dripping on my wall, weighing heavy on my rest –
I dream the dead,
Could rise again, talk again, laugh again…
And the hunters could hunt again, and the prey re-vive, and the grass in the plains
Re-sap, and hope re-new, and dreams re-fruitify;
The dead re-animated to walk with me again.
3. Elegy for an Old Woman
The last time I saw you
Time had you twisted and trussed up in bondage
And on your face lines marked the painful geography of your recent path
Beneath you, your limbs all tangled and useless
I remember, in the corner life and youth stood wordless
Vanquished, as they always must, by time
Time triumphant with news of your passing
The young men will bear your coffin up the hill
To commit your tired corpse to the worms and decay
Mourners will mourn, the sun will rise, the rain will fall
Over your tomb the grass will grow and dry and die,
And you will be forgotten
But today I remember you erect and strong in the field,
The sun over your shoulder as you broke earth and rock
Tireless, your hoe pneumatic precise,
And in the evenings I see your daughters around you—
Their features a reflection of what you once were:
Young and strong and beautiful, a maiden
Shy and coy and happy, waiting in the inner room for her groom
I remember every laughter we laughed—
The echoes etched in stone, never to be erased by time
And although mourners will mourn, the sun did shine behind you
Like a flash in a camera recording, as proof to posterity
Those days in the field, when you stood strong and erect
And who will say you never lived, and loved, and laughed in time’s face
Even as it encroached nearer every day?
Helon Habila was born in Nigeria. He is an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at George Mason University in Virginia. His novels include,Waiting for an Angel (2002), Measuring Time (2007), and Oil on Water (2010). He is the editor of the Granta Book of African Short Story (2011). Habila’s novels, poems, and short stories have won many honors and awards, including the Commonwealth Prize for Best First Novel (Africa Section), the Caine Prize, the Virginia Library Foundation Award for Fiction, and most recently the Windham-Campbell Prize. Habila is a regular contributor to the UK Guardian, and he has been a contributing editor to the VQR since 2004.
His most current book is a nonfiction account of the 2014 kidnapping of schoolgirls in Nigeria titled, The Chibok Girls: The Boko Haram Kidnappings and Islamist Militancy in Nigeria. Habila lives in Virginia with his family.