Deification of poetic craft: the last of the Egypt trilogy

I

There, among those verdant meadows, oh Nefertiti
Immolated and transposed into a Langi Egyptologist
I played the banjo, awaiting a daughter of the Nile,
Lo! ‘Twas the Nightingale Arabica coming, and none!

II

I beheld the beauty with silver spangles on her breast, giggling
Oh genius of Babel, curse you I, for erecting this smokescreen
She spoke in her tongue, and I in another, but hieroglyphics!
Take me to the Oracle at Giza, said I, that I may learn a new cord.

We stood on the opposite ends of the neo-Modernists. Our faith was lost in the traditional forms of poetry. We believed in a deified poetic craft. Our influences transcended our immediate background. Poetry linked us with other generations. We had our fires where we sung our songs, oblivious that we were being ignored. And we were a handful. Here was one such poetic prose.

The language of poetry needed not be freed from its elegance. Poetry, like a secluded home, a shrine, was supposed to be a place where we all got lost in trying to locate, and when we did, it was refreshing. Poetry was supposed to be melodic and memorable. Today, that commitment to poetic craft, taxing as it has always been, has been abandoned, and poetry disgraced. The emphasis is now more on subject. Yet a balance between subject and discipline is necessary.

The poet of immemorial is at once baffling and obscure, making him a most difficult poet to the uninitiated. To the initiated though, his poetry is full of allusions. In the fragments here presented, ‘immolation’ points to the fact that the poem was written after the poet’s near-fatal experience with armed goons. Did the poet seek to immolate himself by virtue of attending a literary function? Is our subscription to the principle of unbridled free speech an act of immolation? The ‘sepulchre’ is for the poet an important place of ‘transposition’.

‘Verdant meadows’ becomes the imagery of a fertile place of intellectual pursuit, an idyllic deification of Ancient Egypt (Africa) as the cradle of civilisation. ‘There, among those verdant meadows’ and not ‘Here, in this verdant meadows’ suggests that this poem was written ‘after’ and not ‘during’ a trip to Egypt. Yet were it not for that pilgrimage the poem might not have been born. That pilgrimage therefore becomes an important source of inspiration. But inspiration is triggered by an urge or a desire to express a feeling, an idea, or an observation. The poet did experience that strong desire to make a poetic installation of that trip to the cradle of civilisation.

In ordinary conversations, Egypt is a metaphorical term meaning breaking with the past - do not take us back to Egypt. That metaphor has its genesis in the Bible - when Moses leads the children of Israel from bondage. But Egypt is also the country where young Jesus escaped into exile, or where Joseph shelters his family from a long spell of famine in his country. Where is the metaphor for that richness of hospitality?

Milton in his poem ‘On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity’ seeks the destruction and erasure from memory of ancient Egyptian gods, ‘nor is Osiris seen/In Memphian grove or green,’ while at the same time celebrates the triumph of Christ over ‘The brutish Nile gods!’

A renowned Kenyan author Dr David Maillu, fondly referred to as the Father of Popular Literature, has recently published a book he calls an African bible titled, ‘KA: Holly Book of Neter’. Dr Maillu told me recently in an interview that the Negro race has worshiped a god (Neter) since the beginning of time and that the absence of a written text does not mean that Africans did not know religion. But the use of ‘holly’ on a book that is neither authenticated by Christianity or Islam, must meet with strong opposition from these religions.

Queen Nefertiti is enacted as a divine goddess. She remains mum to the persona’s lamentation. When he plays on his musical instrument to entreat a ‘daughter of the Nile’, he is instead met with an amazing Arab lady ‘with silver spangles on her breast’, a woman almost in the league of Sappho of Lesbos, for she too is a singer, whom she requests to take him to the Oracle at Giza.

‘Daughter of the Nile’, refers to a water nymph or an African mermaid. There is the mythical tale of a Kitmikaye, which relates the story of a wealthy woman who emerges from some water mass. The woman is emotionally overwhelmed by the sight of a man in tattered clothes. She sympathises with him and they love. Long after they are married, she is betrayed by the man. Their marriage breaks. The short of it is that like the Biblical wife of Lot, she turned into the stones of Kitmikaye in Nyanza Province of Western Kenya. Oh woman, woman/to undeserving you tend! Thus wrote I in one of my poems to warn folks of deceptive politicians!

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* Khainga O’Okwemba is a poet, writer and the treasurer, International PEN Kenya Chapter.
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