Tell me where am from

Tell me where the river swallowed our names,

Where the moon stopped whispering our stories.

OnyeKwere, you have seen the smoke rise from the old shrines,

You have heard the drums call the spirits—

So tell me, where do I begin?

Did my father leave footprints before the flood?

Did my mother weave our name into the mats of the old hut?

Or did the wind carry it away before I could speak?

Onyekwere, do the gods still remember us?

Or have they turned their backs like elders who have lost patience?

They say we were once kings,

But now we dig through ashes looking for the throne.

The fifth page of the book is missing,

And I fear the sixth was never written.

Tell me, Igwe Kwere, tell me where I’m from—

Before I become another name the wind refuses to carry.

Onyekwere, tell me what you know,

Appease the gods to show us the path to the books,

For the men who knew were taken away,

Made strangers to their own stories.

They have tasted wine that made them speak foolishly,

They loved gold and sold their history to the foreign man.

They understand our wisdom but came later to teach us our own tongue.

If the gods are dumb now, Onyekwere, let us know.

I was told it was four hundred years in a foreign land,

Where sang to Udo our song to their gods command

The fifth page of the book could not be found,

That was where my father wrote his heart

Before his journey four hundred years ago.

They killed men and took their wives,

I hope their children remember

their way back home,

I hope they remember their tribe and farm.

Nwa Ngozi, pre-harvest food, we missed,

The old way to celebrate war and victory,

The new moon and the ancient calendar

Do they still know?

To be continued

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