Gabriel Imomotimi Okara

Today we note the birth date of Nigerian poet, novelist and playwright Gabriel Imomotimi Okara (April 24, 1921 – March 25, 2019) who was born in Bumoundi in Yenagoa, Bayelsa State, Nigeria.

The first modernist poet of Anglophone Africa, he is best known for his early experimental novel, The Voice (1964), and his award-winning poetry, published in The Fisherman's Invocation (1978) and The Dreamer, His Vision (2005). In both his poems and his prose, Okara drew on African thought, religion, folklore and imagery.

Written in 1950, the following poem is about the river Nun, situated in Rivers State, Nigeria. The river was formed when the Nigerian river split into two, forming Nun and Forcados rivers. The poem is an Ode written by Okara as a memory and remembrance of river Nun.

In one of his interviews, Okara stated, “I began to think about my experiences in the environment in which I grew up. I grew up in the village of Bomoundi on the riverbanks where water was everything for us. We used it for cooking, washing, transportation; travelling from place to place.”

Here’s the poem for your consideration:

The Call of the River Nun

I hear your call!
I hear it far away;
I hear it break the circle of these crouching hills.
I want to view your face again and feel your cold embrace;
or at your brim to set myself and inhale your breath;
or like the trees, to watch my mirrored self unfold and span my days with song from the lips of dawn.
I hear your lapping call!
I hear it coming through; invoking the ghost of a child listening, where river birds hail your silver-surfaced flow.

My river’s calling too!
Its ceaseless flow impels my found’ring canoe down its inevitable course.
And each dying year brings near the sea-bird call, the final call that stills the crested waves and breaks in two the curtain of silence of my upturned canoe.
O incomprehensible God!
Shall my pilot be my inborn stars to that final call to Thee.
O my river’s complex course?

-- Gabriel Imomotimi Okara