Unleash your creativityPosted by Dr G.T.Igodo Sun, August 01, 2010 22:01:18I am feeling a little homesick today. I'm sure it's pretty much the same way that Gabriel Okara felt when he wrote these lines from the "crouching hills" of Ibadan:
"I hear your call!
I hear it far away;
I hear it break the circle of these crouching hills.
I want to view your face again and feel your cold embrace;
or at your brim to set myself and inhale your breath;
or like the trees, to watch my mirrored self unfold and span my days with song from the lips of dawn.
I hear your lapping call!
I hear it coming through; invoking the ghost of a child listening, where river birds hail your silver-surfaced flow.
My river’s calling too!
Its ceaseless flow impels my found’ring canoe down its inevitable course.
And each dying year brings near the sea-bird call, the final call that stills the crested waves and breaks in two the curtain of silence of my upturned canoe.
O incomprehensible God!
Shall my pilot be my inborn stars to that final call to Thee.
O my river’s complex course?"
I'm sure I'll soon get over it.
Unleash your creativityPosted by Wande Fafunso Sun, April 25, 2010 18:18:45In the last week,i have been involved in a stimulating
discussion on present day Nigeria & which way forward with the
friend of a friend on this mutual friend's Facebook page.
As i was reading his last post and thinking about some of the ideas he
put forward on there,i remembered this writing by Khalil
Gibran the Lebanese- American poet & writer which i'd read quite a while back.
And i thought,to think that he wrote this circa 1934...he must have probably seen a vision of 2010 Nigeria !!
"Pity the Nation", by Khalil Gibran
Pity the nation that is full of beliefs and empty of religion.
Pity the nation that wears a cloth it does not weave,
eats a bread it does not harvest,
and drinks a wine that flows not from its own wine-press.
Pity the nation that acclaims the bully as hero,
and that deems the glittering conqueror bountiful.
Pity a nation that despises a passion in its dream,
yet submits in its awakening.
Pity the nation that raises not its voice
save when it walks in a funeral,
boasts not except among its ruins,
and will rebel not save when its neck is laid
between the sword and the block.
Pity the nation whose statesman is a fox,
whose philosopher is a juggler,
and whose art is the art of patching and mimicking.
Pity the nation that welcomes its new ruler with trumpeting,
and farewells him with hooting,
only to welcome another with trumpeting again.
Pity the nation whose sages are dumb with years
and whose strong men are yet in the cradle.
Pity the nation divided into into fragments,
each fragment deeming itself a nation.
Unleash your creativityPosted by Dr G.T.Igodo Wed, February 24, 2010 02:12:43When Things Fall Apart
Then Chinua Achebe is No Longer at Ease
He needs A Man of the People
To take The Arrow of God
And banish all The trouble with Nigeria
Having done that he takes Chike and the River
To sort out the Anthills on the Savannah
