Three Poems by S. Su’eddie Vershima Agema

Memory and the Call of Waters is a collection of poems that interrogates personal and collective memory, juxtaposed with current realities woven into diverse facets, from love, family, culture, and politics, to depression, survival, hope, and redemption. Written in mixed styles, it is an unpretentious collection.

The poems excerpted here offer a glimpse into the emotional and thematic depth of the collection and will linger with the reader beyond the final line.

Ibadan

The strokes on your children's faces are washed 
By the flood of folks who continually call you mother 
The remains of tradition are left in tongues that defy 
Cosmopolitan hugs of visitors who come in from varied lands
You accept their hugs and lay mats for them to become your children 
Despite the offspring of your womb who hold on to the irony 
Of a love that welcomes and yet alienates.

Stomachs dance to sweaty black mountains with ewedu
Eyes feast on riveting rusty roofs, legs stretching to Jericho for books
Pilgrims trace the footprints of Mbari, the Black Orpheus and transitions
Carved in history as other steps find life in new genial sands.

I have tasted your goodness, and I am lost in your ancestral modernity
Looking from Broking House heights and Cocoa's cliffs, Dugbe's heart is
   shown in Mokola's madness
   a million souls strip off sanity for shame as they forage in nature's suit.

Ibadan, your cemeteries swell, and Eko lures a trickling count
Yet, your stomach bloats with endless lines of ants who march 
From Challenge to Samonda and beyond 
Accidents await as automobiles kiss each other or eat raw flesh 
Like your many other contraptions

You hold out patiently, Ibadan, gazing at your lands from Bower's top 
For you know every water shall dry and memory will revere you.

home

home is where the heart... hiss

home is living memory
a small pile of shit
waiting
to
hug your eyes
tickle your nose 
(and) kiss your feet

it is the sight of plain bums 
squatting at weird angles 
saluting flies who kiss the holes 
dropping prospective maggots 
as more legs come to squat 
and spread nyamanyama 
where our pride should be

but beyond stiff one-sided narratives 
knock

the door opens and home becomes a tease
where we kerewa passions singing in frenzied harmony 
a radio blares showkey and others galala away their frustrations 
later, a kaakaki blends to drums and we swange our hips

home turns to bars where barks without bites resonate 
as smiles cover our hearts miles in sweats, we adjust slowly 
and our suffering becomes a lesser burden tuning to fela's beats

home is where our hearts...ease

Memory’s hold on Mother’s Day

(for Chris Ayede-Agema, Marie Aduro, Dora Oyana, Eugenia Abu & Agatha Agema)

The fires of life are lit from wombs
that warm nine months to bring wonders 
whose brightness deny smokes.

Theirs are tales,
ours, all narratives—

these tales fill our life
footnotes of strife that mount memories,
foundations of our strength, to fight, win, lose and live.

II
An early chapter appears on my mind's sheets:
Me, shivering with upturned eyes
my tale spiralling to a close
even as I called your name to deliver me from fever
          Mummy!
What other name burns in a child's heart
in times of strain?

But you were far away,
seeking means to find our bread of sustenance.
You arrived home at midnight, after a seventeen-hour shift,
wearing tiredness like a coat.

Your eyes met my shivering frame.
Motherly instinct undressed your exhaustion,
as you picked me up
your feet became wings speeding our run
to the nearest hospital miles away.

We had silence for our companion 
and when it became too comfortable
a sob from you or some more clattering from me
we found the home of healing after an eternity on our feet; 
me on your back like a rider on a donkey.

By dawn, I was well enough to smile my way to another day, 
you simply took your bath and found the road to work again.

III
The chapters roll and quickly, I find myself 
years away: our tale has made me a wandering man
seeking bread for my mouth
and the boy who took a ride on your back yesterday 
walks the streets today to seek remnants of wealth 
that hides in the country's yesterday.

Your voice is a whisper that sneaks on the other side, 
a laugh only you can conjure appears in my mind 
I try to translate it to words
but you cut me short:
        Hello son.. I cant talk much... the boss is watching 
        and I have hours to clock before I close...

It is Sunday and your increasing grey is no excuse 
to decrease your Manor hours, seeking
the bread you have placed on our tables 
through the several pages of our tales.
I nearly charge at Napoleon who lets you work
blind to the bend time has brought to your waist...

             The piper dictates, you answer my unsaid charge.

I swallow poverty's impotence
the line clicks off as work drags your love away 
leaving me with a memory of warmth no distance can hide.

IV Epilogue
Aôndo, if you live above the clouds as you do in 0ur hearts
best author writing our tales
please, rid her of every torment
Send memory to help give her more pleasurable moments...

Let the spirit of every fire live on
let the smokes be dispersed...
Life is a narrative, and you, Mother, remain the heart of this tale
a fire that burns bright in all our hearts.

---

---