Ogaga Ifowodo
XLV (from “The Pipes War”)
XLV (from “The Pipes War”)
They scrap for a living
where the land’s promise was boundless ease.
The fisherman throws his net, rejoices
for a single meal’s catch, as trawlers
haul in schools of fish. Tankers,
whose docking and leaving make his canoe
rock to the wild tune of their wakes, sail away
with Bonny Light crude. And far
from the lighted Jetty, he paddles home
by the flame of Iron-Dragon –
the gas-flaring stack whose awful mouth spits fire
without cease near his village. Born before
the first built by Shell, he too had cursed
the dragon, called it Hell’s Gorge,
sure to retch on every head afflictions and deaths
sucked from the depths of the earth;
till the women found its oven heat perfect
for drying tapioca. Till he – in the absence
of eletiriki – renamed the red tongues snarling
at the inky skies, Oil Lamps of the Delta.
