stereo mp3 audio file.
WRITER
Olajide Osalawu
Loss is a Thing of Hope
Episode: P077
START: January 29, 2024
ENDS: February 11, 2024
Length: 25' mins
Host/Producer: Ingrid Rose
Goodbye to Lampedusa
It is what they say
because the sea does not have footprints
to see where others have ended their journeys,
and today—this incandescent afternoon—
they tell you to follow
the path of the wind,
follow it to where the water leads you
as a new merchandise arrives
with a parcel of goodbye.
Goodbye is what they tell you
as your final parting gift, so close
your heart to unholy thoughts
about the waves.
Olajide Osalawu
Nigerian poet Salawu Ọlájídé joins host Ingrid Rose to discuss his chapbook, Preface for Leaving Homeland.
Ọlájídé is a Ph.D candidate at University of Alberta with a passionate interest in de-colonization. "Goodbye is a migrant word", Ọlájídé says of the title of his poem, Goodbye to Lampedusa.
Lampedusa, an island off the coast of Italy known for fishing and tourism has welcomed many African migrants in the past. In autumn 2023 the resources of this generous island were overwhelmed by Africans fleeing war and poverty, “We find people at sea – on boats and in the water – and we rescue them,” Pietro Riso, a local fisherman told Al Jazeera. “At times, we find bodies in our nets.”
Ọlájídé is also passionate about preservation of Indigenous language. "When I see Nigerian writers writing in English receiving national awards, I recognize an implicit gesture of exclusion going on as well. I wonder what kind of awakening could greet Nigerian literature if more indigenous voices were included in these literary spaces."
from a 2021 article, On the Politics of Language in Nigerian Literature, Ọlájídé Salawu Examines the Colonial Grounding of the Country's Literary Industry.
NOTE!
Transcriptions of the poems in this episode will be available to view on the Writers Radio Listen page while the program is on air and with our Podcast.
It is what they say
because the sea does not have footprints
to see where others have ended their journeys,
and today—this incandescent afternoon—
they tell you to follow
the path of the wind,
follow it to where the water leads you
as a new merchandise arrives
with a parcel of goodbye.
Goodbye is what they tell you
as your final parting gift, so close
your heart to unholy thoughts
about the waves.
(Fanus says)
“I’d never been in a body of water before. I was trying to stay afloat by splashing
my hands like a dog.”
The water says run and the waves say so too,
my body hangs on proving courage to the shards of metal
carrying us from the bank of Libya
but now sinking.
How do you run on water when your hands are not fins
and everyone is holding on to the other struggling
to stay afloat this undulating surface? How do you swim
when the metallic hope cracks at the bottom and gives you out
to the sea in the dead of the night? How do you hold to floating
bodies half-eaten by sharks? How do you know that the light dimming faraway
is waiting to welcome you?
What greets you when you get home; the trees greet you blistering.
The path you left has expanded its stomach and it no longer
admits feet alone. Machines have rented the street.
Your arrival marks the third anniversary of your father’s lung disease.
Your father sits at the side of an aspen tree while the wind breaks on his naked
body waiting one day for you to return. He sits there
on the bamboo chair until the sun goes down.
At the open veranda lies your mother’s grave which has grown some
odd flowers to her memories. Your old friend has turned the village priest;
he already predicts your coming. At your arrival, children gather around you
like a modern god. They shout a name you no longer hear.
What greets you when get home: Are you embraced by mud-wall? Or,
welcomed by a cow dung cemented floor? Your ears have lost the lyrics
maidens sing when they see virile men. You break and turn as one approaches you;
shrug her off. In the distance the wave of the city reaches your ears
stifling your yearning. What greets you when you get here?
Your brother greets you; you no longer hear
your father speak in old proverbs that sound odd.
Your sister is now married with children; you might never see her again.
What greets you when you get home?
Your eyes look for rediscovery in between the crevice
opposite the red-mud wall.
- for Chigbo
Biting as it may be, I still like the clatters of the train as it whorls
Behind the residence heading towards Winnipeg’s end.
And this is what I devote my thawing morning to these days
To stay at the window and watch January stumbling languidly
To a conclusion. To watch the marvel of the ice-rock stomach of Red River.
To think about catastrophe as a thing of joy. To remember loss as a thing of hope
When the news breaks, and funeral starts in a small town as Zoom hour candle hour.
Today, the air smells of the dead. The trees beside the house stand bare and vulnerable.
The birds have headed elsewhere, but their elegies reach our veranda in this snow-faced city.
The sun is in a hurry to go these days, desperate for grey damask to run over the sky.
Each evening I return to the same spot longing to jump on the head of this train.
To see if it will carry me through the hard forest of the world into my mother’s arms.
You must learn the work
of grace, early, in a country
that delights in atrophy. You must
trim your fury at the edges
when they say,
“Child, take your brother home
and bury your dead in peace.”
At the airport waiting lounge,
little gossips persist about bones
and blood in nearby bushes. In Benue,
a village was shaved clean
of their human memories
and termites return home with harvest
of bones and basket of earthen flesh.
At the border town the prophet says,
“I pray for you today travelers;
may exile be kind to you.”