landward

1.
toward land.
"the ship turned landward"

1.
facing toward land as opposed to sea.
"the landward side of the road"

shadows falling on everything they had to leave

and memory itself has become an emigrant

I have two daughters. They are all I ever wanted from the earth. Or almost all. I also wanted one piece of ground: One city trapped by hills. One urban river. An island in its element. So I could say mine. My own.

Anansi

(For our language –’bad talking’– detentions)

declensions

the class to which a noun or adjective is assigned according to the manner of this variation.

dekinked our hair

Borrowed images willed our skins pale

Until the philosophy which hold one race superior

War in the east, War in the west, War up north, War down south –

Until the colour of a man’s skin Is of no more significance than the colour of his eyes

Until the philosophy which hold one race superior And another Inferior Is finally And permanently Discredited And abandoned –

Just as some kind of analytical technique is needed to understand a dream, so a knowledge of mythology is needed in order to grasp the meaning of a content deriving from the deeper levels of the psyche….

Adolf Bastian

In addition to our immediate consciousness, which is of a thoroughly personal nature

While the personal unconscious is made up essentially of contents which have at one time been conscious, but which have disappeared from consciousness through having been forgotten or repressed, the contents of the collective unconscious have never been in consciousness, and therefore have never been individually acquired but owe their existence exclusively to heredity.

motifs

In Breughel’s Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry, But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green Water, and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky, Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

Breughel’s Icarus

Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry, But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone

Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot

While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along; How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting For the miraculous birth, there always must be Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating On a pond at the edge of the wood: They never forgot

About suffering they were never wrong, The old Masters: how well they understood Its human position: how it takes place

dully

Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair! Nothing beside remains.

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings; Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!

I met a traveller from an antique land

But I never like painting. In school I hated Art like anything. And Modern Art I cannot understand. Like Picasso— Why he always show A man with funny shape Head and body all mixed up? I think It is all nonsensical.

I like the music to be sentimental Like at night while dim light in my room, I turn on the radio. O Ross Hamilton is my favourite His words so full of meaning “I’ll go out in the night Buy you a dream.”

Not say I don’t appreciate poetry; But you speak of poetry which have no rhyme, Not like the ones I sometime quote “What is our life so full of care We got no time to stand and stare?”

Not say I don’t appreciate poetry; But you speak of poetry which have no rhyme, Not like the ones I sometime quote “What is our life so full of care We got no time to stand and stare?” But still I must admit I don’t like poetry Very much. I like music. Not jazz American stuff, Classical music worse still too long and dull, I like the music to be sentimental Like at night while dim light in my room, I turn on the radio. O Ross Hamilton is my favourite His words so full of meaning “I’ll go out in the night Buy you a dream.” But I never like painting. In school I hated Art like anything. And Modern Art I cannot understand. Like Picasso— Why he always show A man with funny shape Head and body all mixed up? I think It is all nonsensical.

When my rooms have been decked out and the flutes sound and the laughter there is loud, let me ever feel that I have not invited thee to my house

If it is not my portion to meet thee in this life then let me ever feel that I have missed thy sight —let me not forget for a moment, let me carry the pangs of this sorrow in my dreams and in my wakeful hours. As my days pass in the crowded market of this world and my hands grow full with the daily profits, let me ever feel that I have gained nothing —let me not forget for a moment, let me carry the pangs of this sorrow in my dreams and in my wakeful hours. When I sit by the roadside, tired and panting, when I spread my bed low in the dust, let me ever feel that the long journey is still before me —let me not forget a moment, let me carry the pangs of this sorrow in my dreams and in my wakeful hours. When my rooms have been decked out and the flutes sound and the laughter there is loud, let me ever feel that I have not invited thee to my house —let me not forget for a moment, let me carry the pangs of this sorrow in my dreams and in my wakeful hours

let me not forget for a moment, let me carry the pangs of this sorrow in my dreams and in my wakeful hours

Step-Dad spits liquor back into glass, Mum’s body rolls back up the stairs, the bone pops back into place, maybe she keeps the baby.

I can write the poem and make it disappear, give them stumps for hands if even once they touched us without consent, I can make us loved, just say the word.

The poem can start with him walking backwards into a room. He takes off his jacket and sits down for the rest of his life; that’s how we bring Dad back. I can make the blood run back up my nose, ants rushing into a hole. We grow into smaller bodies, my breasts disappear, your cheeks soften, teeth sink back into gums. I can make us loved, just say the word. Give them stumps for hands if even once they touched us without consent, I can write the poem and make it disappear. Step-Dad spits liquor back into glass, Mum’s body rolls back up the stairs, the bone pops back into place, maybe she keeps the baby. Maybe we’re okay kid? I’ll rewrite this whole life and this time there’ll be so much love, you won’t be able to see beyond it. You won’t be able to see beyond it, I’ll rewrite this whole life and this time there’ll be so much love. Maybe we’re okay kid, maybe she keeps the baby. Mum’s body rolls back up the stairs, the bone pops back into place, Step-Dad spits liquor back into glass. I can write the poem and make it disappear, give them stumps for hands if even once they touched us without consent, I can make us loved, just say the word. Your cheeks soften, teeth sink back into gums we grow into smaller bodies, my breasts disappear. I can make the blood run back up my nose, ants rushing into a hole, that’s how we bring Dad back. He takes off his jacket and sits down for the rest of his life. The poem can start with him walking backwards into a room.

I can make the blood run back up my nose, ants rushing into a hole.

Of the wide world I stand alone, and think

Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance, And think that I may never live to trace    Their shadows with the magic hand of chance;

never

This living hand, now warm and capable Of earnest grasping, would, if it were cold And in the icy silence of the tomb, So haunt thy days and chill thy dreaming nights That thou would wish thine own heart dry of blood So in my veins red life might stream again, And thou be conscience-calm’d–see here it is– I hold it towards you.

Why did you form a monster so hideous that even you turned from me in disgust? God, in pity, made man beautiful and alluring, after his own image; but my form is a filthy type of yours, more horrid even from the very resemblance. Satan had his companions, fellow devils, to admire and encourage him, but I am solitary and abhorred.’

“You are in the wrong,” replied the fiend; “and instead of threatening, I am content to reason with you.

“You must create a female for me with whom I can live in the interchange of those sympathies necessary for my being. This you alone can do, and I demand it of you as a right which you must not refuse to concede.”

“One day, when I was oppressed by cold, I found a fire which had been left by some wandering beggars, and was overcome with delight at the warmth I experienced from it. In my joy I thrust my hand into the live embers, but quickly drew it out again with a cry of pain.

“It is with considerable difficulty that I remember the original era of my being; all the events of that period appear confused and indistinct. A strange multiplicity of sensations seized me, and I saw, felt, heard, and smelt at the same time; and it was, indeed, a long time before I learned to distinguish between the operations of my various senses. By degrees, I remember, a stronger light pressed upon my nerves, so that I was obliged to shut my eyes. Darkness then came over me and troubled me, but hardly had I felt this when, by opening my eyes, as I now suppose, the light poured in upon me again. I walked and, I believe, descended, but I presently found a great alteration in my sensations. Before, dark and opaque bodies had surrounded me, impervious to my touch or sight; but I now found that I could wander on at liberty, with no obstacles which I could not either surmount or avoid. The light became more and more oppressive to me, and the heat wearying me as I walked, I sought a place where I could receive shade. This was the forest near Ingolstadt; and here I lay by the side of a brook resting from my fatigue, until I felt tormented by hunger and thirst. This roused me from my nearly dormant state, and I ate some berries which I found hanging on the trees or lying on the ground. I slaked my thirst at the brook, and then lying down, was overcome by sleep.

In the middle rank of life

I lament that women are systematically degraded by receiving the trivial attentions, which men think it manly to pay to the sex, when, in fact, they are insultingly supporting their own superiority.

lick the dust

sensible men in favour of an aristocracy

I had worked hard for nearly two years, for the sole purpose of infusing life into an inanimate body. For this I had deprived myself of rest and health. I had desired it with an ardour that far exceeded moderation; but now that I had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart

A new species would bless me as its creator and source; many happy and excellent natures would owe their being to me. No father could claim the gratitude of his child so completely as I should deserve theirs.

My limbs now tremble, and my eyes swim with the remembrance; but then a resistless and almost frantic impulse urged me forward; I seemed to have lost all soul or sensation but for this one pursuit.

But I must quickly add that I too am just as guilty in the question of the single story. A few years ago, I visited Mexico from the U.S. The political climate in the U.S. at the time was tense, and there were debates going on about immigration. And, as often happens in America, immigration became synonymous with Mexicans. There were endless stories of Mexicans as people who were fleecing the healthcare system, sneaking across the border, being arrested at the border, that sort of thing. I remember walking around on my first day in Guadalajara, watching the people going to work, rolling up tortillas in the marketplace, smoking, laughing. I remember first feeling slight surprise. And then, I was overwhelmed with shame. I realized that I had been so immersed in the media coverage of Mexicansthat they had become one thing in my mind, the abject immigrant. I had bought into the single story of Mexicans and I could not have been more ashamed of myself.

Years later, I thought about this when I left Nigeria to go to university in the United States. I was 19. My American roommate was shocked by me. She asked where I had learned to speak English so well, and was confused when I said that Nigeria happened to have English as its official language. She asked if she could listen to what she called my “tribal music,” and was consequently very disappointed when I produced my tape of Mariah Carey. She assumed that I did not know how to use a stove. What struck me was this: She had felt sorry for me even before she saw me. Her default position toward me, as an African, was a kind of patronizing, well-meaning pity. My roommate had a single story of Africa: a single story of catastrophe. In this single story, there was no possibility of Africans being similar to her in any way, no possibility of feelings more complex than pity, no possibility of a connection as human equals.

What this demonstrates, I think, is how impressionable and vulnerable we are in the face of a story,particularly as children. Because all I had read were books in which characters were foreign, I had become convinced that books by their very nature had to have foreigners in them and had to be about things with which I could not personally identify. Now, things changed when I discovered African books.There weren’t many of them available, and they weren’t quite as easy to find as the foreign books. But because of writers like Chinua Achebe and Camara Laye, I went through a mental shift in my perception of literature. I realized that people like me, girls with skin the color of chocolate, whose kinky hair could not form ponytails, could also exist in literature. I started to write about things I recognized.

I’m a storyteller. And I would like to tell you a few personal stories about what I like to call “the danger of the single story.” I grew up on a university campus in eastern Nigeria. My mother says that I started reading at the age of two, although I think four is probably close to the truth. So I was an early reader,and what I read were British and American children’s books.

sinews

Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

Little Lamb who made thee          Dost thou know who made thee          Little Lamb I’ll tell thee,          Little Lamb I’ll tell thee!

heath,

“In my youth,” Father William replied to his son, “I feared it might injure the brain; But, now that I’m perfectly sure I have none, Why, I do it again and again.”

In the days of my youth, Father William replied, ⁠I remember’d that youth could not last; I thought of the future whatever I did, ⁠That I never might grieve for the past.

How doth the little busy bee Improve each shining hour, And gather honey all the day From every opening flower!

In works of labor or of skill, I would be busy too; For Satan finds some mischief still For idle hands to do.

‘Then you should say what you mean,’ the March Hare went on. ‘I do,’ Alice hastily replied; ‘at least—at least I mean what I say—that’s the same thing, you know.’ ‘Not the same thing a bit!’ said the Hatter. ‘You might just as well say that “I see what I eat” is the same thing as “I eat what I see”!’ ‘You might just as well say,’ added the March Hare, ‘that “I like what I get” is the same thing as “I get what I like”!’ ‘You might just as well say,’ added the Dormouse, who seemed to be talking in his sleep, ‘that “I breathe when I sleep” is the same thing as “I sleep when I breathe”!’

‘I have answered three questions, and that is enough,’ Said his father; ‘don’t give yourself airs! Do you think I can listen all day to such stuff? Be off, or I’ll kick you down stairs!’

There was nothing so very remarkable in that; nor did Alice think it so very much out of the way to hear the Rabbit say to itself, ‘Oh dear! Oh dear! I shall be late!’ (when she thought it over afterwards, it occurred to her that she ought to have wondered at this, but at the time it all seemed quite natural); but when the Rabbit actually took a watch out of its waistcoat-pocket, and looked at it, and then hurried on, Alice started to her feet, for it flashed across her mind that she had never before seen a rabbit with either a waistcoat-pocket, or a watch to take out of it, and burning with curiosity, she ran across the field after it, and fortunately was just in time to see it pop down a large rabbit-hole under the hedge.

One had a cat’s face, One whisk’d a tail, One tramp’d at a rat’s pace, One crawl’d like a snail,

Neat like bees, as sweet and busy

Wherefore, Bees of England, forge Many a weapon, chain, and scourge, That these stingless drones may spoil The forced produce of your toil? Have ye leisure, comfort, calm, Shelter, food, love’s gentle balm?

Till they drop, blind in blood, without a blow.

An old, mad, blind, despised, and dying King

Pursuing these reflections, I thought that if I could bestow animation upon lifeless matter, I might in process of time (although I now found it impossible) renew life where death had apparently devoted the body to corruption.