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A SONG FOR NIGERIAN CHILDREN’S DAY*
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When hunger closes a door, anger opens it with a furious fist.
If you don’t see me in the parade today, don’t think I love my country any less.
I asked Dad for new shoes and those white stockings and belts with shiny buckles. Dad simply shook his head, but a sobering sigh gave away his empty bag. He hasn’t left the house since a thumb-stained dismissal letter he scribbled on a job that was the center of family life.
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Devastating hunger has permanently settled in our overcrowded home.
If you don’t see me at the parade today Don’t think I love my country any less I asked mommy for those green shorts And those pretty shirts we need for the meeting Without which the teacher’s cane Would carve painful patterns On my bony buttocks, The resounding laughter of the luckiest companions Biting through my tattered shirt, Mom simply showed me its tattered wrapping and the empty carcass of her once-full kiosk, now torn down by government emergency edicts that caress the rich and kills to the poor.
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The knife of our country is sharp for the weak and dull for the strong. The more you steal, the less crime you commit. Powerful thieves buy justice in the legal market and buy divine blessings in holy churches and holy mosques.
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If you don’t see me in the parade today, don’t think I love my country any less.
II
If you don’t see me in the parade today, don’t think I love my country any less.
Our line at the stadium today will be short. Short, very short, like our stunted dream: Umaru disappeared from the school register a few weeks ago. After throwing his bag into an angry river. An unhappy morning.
Akanni now stalks the car parkAlternating small commerce with petty theft
Ngozi left one noon without saying a word. Cruelly cornered in the harem of a man whose youngest daughter is about her age.
The school says our parents are poor and our names are dirty. A thousand thorns have grown on the board. The new school gate is high and cruelly padlocked.
If you don’t see me in the parade today, don’t think I love my country any less.
We eat once a day When there is something to eat. But when the pots are silent And the fireplace is cold When dinner turns to dina** And dessert ends in a desert We lie on our crowded mats And count the stars Through our leaky roof
My legs are made of straw. My head spins like a wheel. My flat stomach is a pit for warring worms.
If you don’t see me in the parade today, don’t think I love my country any less.
III
If you don’t see me in the parade today, don’t think I love my country any less.
Dizzy with hunger Consumed with need If I stumble over the Hymn I may faint before the Promise Object of incessant mockery Of the children of wealthy people Whose stolen wealth has depleted the earth Whose moral plague Has sickened our senses
If you don’t see me in the parade today, don’t think I love my country any less.
But I know that many of my companions will come from those mansions of GRA Where every door tells the world to BEWARE OF THE DOG Where parents are magically rich And entire offspring writhe in unearned riches Where cats eat from silver bowls And cockroaches are fat like lucky raiders
Oh, how wonderful to see those comrades running around in shiny SUVs, their uniforms obediently pressed, their silver shoes and their golden feet, marching, singing, waving, blissfully unaware of the rot and ruin their thieving fathers have wrought in our common future. .
Oh, how amazing to shake hands with our nation with such unequal fingers!
If you don’t see me in the parade today, don’t ever think that I love my country.
*First published in “Songs of the Season”, 1990; updated, repurposed and repurposed here with major modifications.
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Niyi Osundare, one of Africa’s leading poets and scholars, is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of English at the University of New Orleans.
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