Dear Poetry.
My beloved poetry. I write to you this letter, with love, not because you are the most beautiful, not because you are perfect, but because you have been my favourite.
You see, this is not an open letter, not the kind of letter someone writes to a loved one who is faraway, or a family member living in the village. No, it is not. This is a note of history, an ode, a merited form of appreciation to a friend who became part of my life. This, I can say, is a love letter. But how do one write a love letter without beautiful those imaginary scenes and sweet stories? How do I tell this tale of long time friendship with all honesty, without twisting the plot, without sounding poetic, or romantic?
Let me begin with how we met.
Meeting You.
How did we meet again? Do you remember? That sunny day at school, that day the sun rose too early in the morning and sweat coated our skins. I had taken a break from my Physics class, not because I wanted to, not because our Physics teacher shouted like a hungry fool, but because I hated physics, because I was tired and in a state of dilemma, stuck between careers and needed space. I was in SS1, young and stubborn; with the dream of being a doctor. Everybody had that dream while growing up here in Nigeria. We all wanted to be Doctors and Lawyers and Bankers until reality hit us in the face and we accepted our unlucky fate. Well, I failed Physics, had zero in my mid-term test so I knew I was never going to be a Doctor. ‘But what else would I be?’ This was the question playing in my head until I walked pass the Art class, felt the noise and energy that filled the room and on a second thought, went inside. The classroom was a small room of happiness, of freedom. On the chalkboard, “Literature in English’ was written in a very beautiful hand written. The teacher, tall, slim and dark had you in his mouth, sweet like a birdsong. He read you out to the class and the melody of his voice and the rhymes of you melted my heart. I asked my friend Izu what you were.
“Poetry.” He said.
“Poetry?”
“Yes,Poetry.” He said and went back to the poem. It was Daffodils, Williams Wordsworth. The name confused me, sounded like a jam of sounds. As the teacher read on, I stared and listened, my ear itching for more.
“Do you people do this every day?” I asked Izu.
“Yes.” He felt disturbed. After the poem ended, the teacher asked,” Who can tell me the symbolism in this poem?” All hands were down. I raised mine and when I stood up, all eyes were on me.
“Are you in this class?” The teacher asked. His face was broad.
“No.” I said, shaking.
“And you know what symbolism is?”
“Yes.”
“So what is the symbolism in the poem?”
“Nature Sir. It is a poem that praises nature,” I said. My uncertainty was clear; it showed in the stuttering of my voice, in the way I stammered.
“Womderful!” The teacher exclaimed, throwing his hands into the air. The smile on his face was wide.
“Clap for him!” The applause was loud and short, but my ego rose, like bread. I imagined my head swelling until it became too heavy to carry.
That was how I met you.
The next day, I carried my locker and moved my things into the Art class. Izu was drunk with surprise. “Are you really sure about this?” He asked me, sucking on his lips a little too hard.
“Yes.” I said.
“What did your parents say? Did you tell them?” I had not thought about that earlier, had not bothered to tell my parents that I had given up my Doctor dream because of Poetry.
“Yes.” I lied.
Later I told my Mother about You. We were in the kitchen. I was washing plates and she was slicing yam. As I washed, I recited lines from Daffodils, the ones I could remember.
“The waves besides them danced, but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not be but gay,
In such a jocund company…”
My mother nodded as I recited. “What song is that?” she asked.
“It’s a poem.”
“When did you start reciting poems?”
“Recently. I moved to the Art class.” At first, I thought she would shout and bark and call me stupid. But she did not. I was free.
Knowing you.
Getting to know you, Poetry, was not an easy drive. It was a journey of holes and spikes. I hated reading. I hated the stress of sitting and swallowing word after word and giving the brain the work of understanding those words. I was a restless person who preferred TV to books, bed to class. But as time went by, with the help of my Literature teacher, I built an interest in you, I learned discipline and understood patience. I discovered that in the words you bury within yourself there is peace; there is a door that leads to the limitless understanding of life. When I became fully familiar with you, reading became a habit, an unquenchable taste. I read ahead of my class and when we read Shakespeare's ‘The Tempest, I knew the words by heart and could recite them without the book. My teacher loved me because of the way I knew you, because I understood you, because I could read the meanings to every word you spoke, feel every word. Most times, I argued with him about you, sometimes I won, other times, experience was the edge he had over me. After class, we would sit in his tiny office, where the wind blew in dried yellow grass and discuss you.
“Poetry is not perfect, you know.” I said.
“Nothing is perfect.” He said. I could perceive the alcohol that reeked heavily from his breath. He too, was not perfect. He drank too much gin, staggered in class and most times, smelled like rotten palm wine. He was like you, like a building with different rooms, beautiful outside, dirty inside. A book of many stories waiting to be read, to be unmasked, to be understood.
“Yes. I know. But Poetry sometimes is too playful, too full of itself and sometimes fails to pass a meaningful message.” I said.
“Then you should correct that.” He said without hesitation, without questioning. “Write your own poetry. Correct the mistakes of other poets. Create magic.” He hiccupped loudly and his chest rose.
“Are you okay sir?”
“I am. I am.” He stood up, walked to the bookshelf, staggering, brought out a book and dusted it with his bare hands. It was a poetry collection, a brown book with flowers and moving ants on its cover.
“Take.” He stretched it forward to me. As he moved closer to me, the scar on his face became clearer, rough patches, only visible when he stood close enough. He was dark but I could see the length of the scar, starting from his skull, ending just before his jaw. No wonder he always wore a cap, I thought.
“What happened to you sir?”
“What?”
“Your face. The scar.”
“An accident.” I had heard about the accident. We spoke about it in class, in his absence. They said he was drunk and driving, on his way from Enugu. We blamed him for drinking, blamed him for smelling, blamed him for failing us, because we assumed he marked our papers drunk.
“How did it happen sir?”
“That shouldn’t be your business. Just take the book and read, then write something and bring it back to me.”
Doing You.
The first poem I wrote was a love poem, to Chinelo. I was in my SS3 and she was in SS2. I liked her, beyond normal likeness. She had a shiny dark skin, slim lips and a slender body. She was beautiful. I poured out my feelings into a paper, drew my emotions with my pen and promised Chinelo the world. When my teacher read the poem, he said, Beautiful! Astoundingly excellent!” I could tell he was drunk; the air between us was thick with the smell of alcohol. His shirt was partly off his trouser and his hair was brown, as if buried in dust.
“You write from your heart. Nice poem, but a wrong topic.” He tossed my poem aside.
“Why? Didn’t you say Poetry is about freedom of expression?” He laughed, and then sulked.
“Anything but love. Love is not good for you, not at this age.”
I wanted to ask him why, but it was obvious that it was not a good time. He would stammer, bulge, and stink of alcohol. I wished he were sober more often, that he didn’t drink, that he could be normal and not stink. Yet, I liked him, because he was my muse in you, poetry, because he was the only one who understood, who saw you the same way as I did. I went home, and I wrote more poems. He always read them, religiously and would always have something to say.
Few days to my graduation from secondary school, he called him into his office. It was December and the harmattan breeze was harsh on our skins. Surprisingly, he was not drunk. The windows were wide open and well ventilated. His clothes were clean and smartly ironed. His hair was neat, well cut. I sat on the chair opposite him, folding my hands to keep myself warm, watching him for some minutes, without saying a word.
“You are leaving school soon.”
“Yes.”
“And you will go to University.”
“Yes Sir.”
“That’s good.” He opened the drawer below his desk, brought out some rough papers and started unfolding them.
“Your poems,” he said. “You remind me of myself, my younger self. I used to write poems too.” His hands were smooth on the paper, and for the first time, I saw the change in him. He was relaxed.
“I wrote poems for her, my girlfriend. Chioma was her name. She was very beautiful, very yellow. I loved her and I wanted to marry her. But her father wanted a rich man, a lawyer actually, and I was nothing but a teacher, a secondary school teacher!” He was calm as he spoke but the emotions were not hidden, were not swallowed by alcohol. In his voice was truth, and history, a box opened in the wind. “Her father wouldn’t accept me as his in-law despite how much I begged. Out of anger, should I say anger? or sadness, or stupidity, Chioma killed herself. She tied a rope around her neck and hanged herself. Can you believe that?” He paused and as if not wanting me to say anything, continued, “That was years ago, but since then, things changed. I became a drunk, drinking alcohol like water, falling, having accidents all the time. Just look at my face, I have scars all over my body. Even my students don’t respect me. They mock me and laugh at me. I was lost. But your poems,” he spread the papers and stretched them so the words could be seen. “Your poems saved me, healed me. Reading them reminded me how beautiful Life is, reminded me of my childhood. And now I have decided to stop drinking. I have decided to stop living in the past and move on. Chioma is died and gone. But I am alive. So why should I not be happy? You are a good poet. Don’t stop writing. Go and create magic.” That was the last time I saw him. That was when I knew what I wanted to be – a poet, a master of words.
Looking back now, at my life as a successful poet, I have not met another person who inspires me like my Literature teacher. Many people read my poems daily, enjoy my works. My books sell like medicine. I have performed for kings and queens, written poems that have changed societies. They say my poetry is like a mirror, a reflection of Life, but none can classify my Poetry like my Literature teacher.
Few months ago, I heard he was dead. I wept and I wrote him a poem. Yesterday I went to his grave, his dry hardened grave. I stood at the end of it and read the poem aloud, bursting into intervals of tears. The sun on my skin was harsh, my head ached, and my eyes did not stop getting wet with tears. The crowd that was there to watch me cheered in admiration, but their cheers did not move me, did not change the sad fact that he was gone and all I gave him was a poem, nothing else but words, words he could not hear or listen to, words that were useless. Poetry is not perfect; sometimes it is too full of itself. My teacher was dead and gone.
So, Dear Poetry, when I said this was a love letter to you, I lied. It is not. This is a letter of tribute to my Literature teacher, the man who made me love you, the man who saw my future as a poet even before I could, a man who made me who I am, who first used the words, ‘Beautiful! Astoundingly excellent!’ to describe you.
This is not a love poem.
Your’s Faithfully,
A nameless poet.
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