Here are two more poems from one of the great literary giants of Africa, Lenrie Peters (medical doctor).
Ruminating over today’s education in Africa, I cannot but wonder what made men like Lenrie Peters, Chinua Achebe and others, who were both geniuses in the field of science as well as Literature, the great men they are. Is it that they were special beings or they were taught by masters of education?
Have we observed how today, students who are arts inclined are not by any long margin inclined towards the sciences?
As I ruminated over these observations, aloud, someone close to me said: “Could it be that those who read education are not given the chance to teach?” I said: “Hold your thought! Those who read education, do they read it out of the love to impart knowledge or out of JAMB default? – “this is what’s available because, (in the particular university you are applying to in Nigeria for example,) although you pass all the exams, the state you hailed from disqualifies you?”
Looking at the backgrounds of both Lenrie Peters, Chinua Achebe, I cannot but wonder if it wasn’t a case of great teachers rather than great students.
As you enjoy two great poems from this great literary mind, Lenrie Peters, lift a prayer to God for Africa. May God give us not only great leaders, but also great teachers, gifted and called! Amen.
Enjoy these poems from Peters’ collection of poems published under the title, POEMS (1967)
We Have Come Home
We have come home
From the bloodless wars
With sunken hearts
Our booths full of pride-
From the true massacre of the soul
When we have asked
‘What does it cost
To be loved and left alone’
We have come home
Bringing the pledge
Which is written in rainbow colours
Across the sky-for burial
But is not the time
To lay wreaths
For yesterday’s crimes,
Night threatens
Time dissolves
And there is no acquaintance
With tomorrow
The gurgling drums
Echo the stars
The forest howls
And between the trees
The dark sun appears.
We have come home
When the dawn falters
Singing songs of other lands
The death march
Violating our ears
Knowing all our loves and tears
Determined by the spinning coin
We have come home
To the green foothills
To drink from the cup
Of warm and mellow birdsong
‘To the hot beaches
Where the boats go out to sea
Threshing the ocean’s harvest
And the hovering, plunging
Gliding gulls shower kisses on the waves
We have come home
Where through the lightening flash
And the thundering rain
The famine the drought,
The sudden spirit
Lingers on the road
Supporting the tortured remnants
of the flesh
That spirit which asks no favour
of the world
But to have dignity.
The Fence
There where the dim past and future mingle
their nebulous hopes and aspirations
there I lie.
There where truth and untruth struggle
in endless and bloody combat,
there I lie.
There where time moves forwards and backwards
with not one moment’s pause for sighing,
there I lie.
There where the body ages relentlessly
and only the feeble mind can wander back
there I lie in open-souled amazement
There where all the opposites arrive
to plague the inner senses, but do not fuse,
I hold my head; and then contrive
to stop the constant motion.
my head goes round and round,
but I have not been drinking;
I feel the buoyant waves; I stagger
It seems the world has changed her garment.
but it is I who have not crossed the fence,
So there I lie.
There where the need for good
and “the doing good” conflict,
there I lie.
