TRIBUTE

(FOR BUCHI EMECHETA)

The world is clad in a black garment!
We are thickly clothed in the slough of despondency.
The gong resonates, the gunpowder blasts
Didigo, digo, roars the great ikoro
The comets hover across the bereaved sky
Mournfully warbling sullen dirges,
Dirges of a departure.

Oh, Emecheta how nobly you
To that great summon answered!
A creative leviathan has joined the trail of the spirits,
Who can protest the inviolable will of the ancestors?

You were a maverick griot
Of renaissance generation pullulating
Along our fledgling nation
Telling the story of your cultural heritage
Adding fine feathers to the cannons of African literature
Indeed, you created a feminine space
In an arena of creative patriarchy
And became a deathless testament
Marbled on the lips of mother Earth.

"It is finished," so decrees the eternal tablet.
You can now go and rest on your laurels
Which cannot be blotted out by the fast hands of Time.
If only the strength of pen could reclaim you
From the tight talons of death
Thousands of literati would maim death
With their boundless brook of ink.

Alas, we the budding writers are greatly pained
Yet we have taken consolation in the baton
You passed; to us and those after;
To ensure an unbroken continuum of creative vocation.

Go well,the trove of treasured stories
Go in peace, Ibuza's finest breed.
We are powerless before death!
As you sojourn beyond, take home also
Amongst your virtuous impedimenta
Our salutes to the owners of the great Hall!
Tell them...
We from this mundane world send our greetings
Adieu great one!

Amadi P. Njoku
2017