The Journey | Nengi Josef Ilagha

After The Funeral

I FOUND myself reading through the early poems of Gabriel Okara in the quiet hours after I returned from his home town, Bomoundi, across the River Nun. My mind was still fresh with images from the final burial rites of the venerable poet. 

I had attended every single event leading up to the burial. My good friend, Emmanuel Frank-Opigo, special marshal and former chairman of the Association of the Nigerian Authors, ANA Bayelsa chapter, was kind enough to give my wife and I a ride from Yenagoa to the Garden City. 

At the service of songs in the Atlantic Hall of Hotel Presidential, Port Harcourt, I was reminded of what Okara told me about being a Christian scientist. It is about getting to know God better, he said. It is about investigating the scriptures with the eye of a scientist, and arriving at a better appreciation of the sacrifice of Christ Jesus. 

It was from Okara I first heard of Christ Jesus rather than Jesus Christ. We were riding in a car bought for him by the Alamieyeseigha government many years ago, heading for his Port Harcourt home. There was an evident sense of awe, a solemn adulation, in the voice of the old man when he said Christ Jesus. 

I could not help but share in the veneration felt by such a respectable poet for Christ Jesus, Son of God. Frankly, I didn’t know anything about how Christian scientists worship until that service of songs in honour of Okara. Two pastors were on the pulpit, male and female, and they complemented each other in taking Bible passages.

The following day, I attended the lecture at the Ebitimi Banigo Hall of the University of Port Harcourt in my blazing red hat. It was the first time my wife and I would walk along the lanes of our alma mater like royalty, many years after we graduated from the Department of English & Literary Studies. 

I was glad to sit amongst a distinguished audience of professors and students to listen to a paper on the poetry of Gabriel Okara presented by Professor Chimalum Nwankwo, a Nigerian don from an American university. I also met Okara’s first son for the first time, and I couldn’t stop shaking hands with the gentleman and his American wife. 

Dr Ebidou Okara was so humble that he left his seat on the high table and was in the process of picking up a chair for a dignitary that had just arrived the hall. The master of ceremonies had to stop him mid-way before the spirit of Okara was offended.

In spite of the heavy rain that evening, we drove to Delta Park for a night of poetry recital at “The Crab.” I felt a keen nostalgia as I gazed at the sculptural piece of Ola Rotimi’s head hanging by the entrance to the theatre. The last time I sat inside “The Crab” at the University of Port Harcourt was in 1984 when Femi Osofisan staged two plays, Once Upon Four Robbers, and Oriki Of A Grasshopper, which I reviewed for the maiden edition of the English departmental journal, Ofirima. For the first time since The Crab was built, I took centre stage and performed a popular Okara poem off the cuff, in what may well have been a dress rehearsal for the real thing.

Back in Yenagoa, in the course of the Requiem of Nine Verses organised by the Association of Nigerian Authors, ANA, Bayelsa chapter, I stood behind a glass lectern to read another stanza from Okara’s famous poem, “The Snowflakes Sail Gently Down.” It turned out to be a rendering that gave me the privilege of posing for a photograph with the acclaimed critic, Professor Ernest Emenyonu. 

The following day, inside the grand bowl of the Gabriel Okara Cultural Centre, Yenagoa, I had the singular honour of being called upon to recite “Piano & Drums,” that majestic poem that still echoes Okara’s cross-cultural voice over the timeline of two successive centuries. I am yet to see a recording of that event, but I hear my performance came out stellar. The ovation in my ears told me that much, but I still wonder if any television station captured it at close quarters.

It was a joy to meet with famous scholars and writers of every genre and pedigree who had all come to pay their final respects to the genius of Gabriel Okara. I was a primary witness to the last moment when the earth was tipped in a growing pile upon the casket that held the remains of Africa’s oldest poet. 

Long after the event, after the return from Bomoundi, across the River Nun, I remain intrigued by the last stanza of the title poem in Okara’s Fisherman’s Invocation, those lines that read like a recession hymn to a festival of life. 

I am one of those who still live with echoes of Okara’s voice in my head, and I have come to realise that Okara was truly fascinated with the origins of the earth, the origins of life. He was curious about the personality of God. In his early writing career, he expressed this curiosity in what may count as his first play, a rendering of the primeval story of mankind according to Ijaw mythology. He told the story of Ogboinba. 

The play was put on stage for a mournful audience at the Gabriel Okara Cultural Centre in the course of the funeral obsequies, the corpse of the venerable poet in attendance.  But, even more importantly, Okara was fascinated by the subject of death, the end of a given lifetime. He pondered some of the hard questions that still confront mankind today. What happens to the soul after death? Should the body be buried, eaten up by worms, or should it be burnt as a sacrifice to the Maker? 

At the age of thirty-one, Okara expressed this profound dilemma in a poem that needs to be given a second look. The poem in question is entitled “Were I To Choose.” The full import of the last stanza, in particular, struck me like an epiphany. 

In simple terms, what the poet is saying in this last stanza is that, if he had a choice in the matter, he would rather be cremated than be eaten up by maggots. In other words, if he had his way, he would have his flesh and bones razed to ashes, and so deny the worms the pleasure of nibbling every nerve and every vein of his body. He would rather that his remains were burnt on a sacred altar, and his ashes gathered for burial.

It is a mark of the poet’s ingenuity that, in all his lifetime, this hopeful sentiment was hidden in the body of a poem, and no reader, no analyst, no professor of literature, could fish it out early enough for public scrutiny before the death of Okara, before the days leading to his final interment in a grave. 

The remains of the poet were laid to rest on Saturday June 22, 2019, at Bomoundi. According to forensic research, it takes forty days after burial for a corpse to be completely stripped of all flesh. The last organ to decompose is the tongue. What remains after that is the bare bones, the full skeleton of what used to be a living human being.

No one would think it necessary to exhume the remains of Gabriel Okara at this point, and grant him the secret wish of his heart. It is instructive only, that we study more closely the works of the masters we think we understand, for nuggets hidden in the folds of their imagination that just might throw new insights to guide mankind aright. 

Consider the range of the poem in its full ambit. It takes its origins from the very first man, and evolves ingenuously to arrive at that disturbing contemplation about how best to dispose of the body after death. This thought-provoking poem, no doubt, is vintage Gabriel Okara.