“To Live is to Forgive, the Great Book Commands”

Ojo Taiye

Art of Creative Unity Award 2020 | Honorable Mention

TO LIVE IS TO FORGIVE, THE GREAT BOOK COMMANDS

           (Benue Massacre, 2001)

When asked my religion, I answer forgiveness. 

I just want to walk through my life unburdened—

there is always something about vulnerability. 

And sometimes hurt is a kind of breathlessness. 

As a confession, I told my therapist I am defacing 

the river of being in love with all my wounds— 

all the ways in which a country threatened my tribe 

with bloodletting. This is an argument about military 

retaliation. If this help, you may think of this extrajudicial 

killing as figurative—a literal marker in the definition's 

landscape representing the bodies slain during 

Zaki-Biam Massacre. Still winter, the branches 

creak and now, motherless— my fear for history 

is always there: standing here at the kitchen door 

waiting like death. To whom do we sing? 

As an example of forgiveness, I stand in the center 

of my room, house, country and say, joy never 

finds us. It's always the other way around. 

HOW TO MAKE PEACE YOUR FRIEND

(Benue Massacre, 2001)

for the first time in eighteen years, 

I want to give up on my grief— a constellation 

of salt air & gloom. today's joy is mine 

& the starlings’ in my heart are out of tune. 

this is the myth I live in now—brief apocalypse 

& I am ready to plant a flag in my mother's 

grave & declare peace as the only trophy 

that doesn't require any pledge. follow any 

road in Gbeji & it will narrow to a mass grave 

filled with burnt bodies— if you trace this 

trajectory long enough, you will find ransacked 

hamlets, & an eviscerated pregnant woman 

lying on the ground in Yam market, 

looking for God on the horizon. 

THE GOOD KIND OF REVENGE

(Igbo Massacre 1966)

The biafran's had it wrong: 

Forgiveness is not a weakness, 

Not a fall from grace. 

No, it's a rain-washed road 

Where I want nothing but 

An olive branch. 

That's the crux of letting go: 

My tribe is decomposed & nameless. 

What drips from my mother's eye

Coats my country with a spreading 

Greenness. I have spent my formative 

Years waiting for love at the wrong roads. 

I have killed my desires, yet I speak 

Of other things. I have this feeling 

That something has been staring 

At me from a bare branch 

In a shepherd's sky. Apparently, 

Holding a grudge is more deadly 

Than smoking. O faithful companions 

Of history, I have read the whole hieroglyphic 

Cycle & it does not explain the carnage—

This ritual, this hunt in the wild 

For small hearts of animals.

I am saying there is rarely any joy 

In a body besieged with unforgetfulness. 

Yesterday, I saw my old grandmother crying 

Over the injustices done to her sons during the war. 

What would our lives be like without forgiveness, 

Proteins, vitamins, or clovers lit purple at their tips? 

In my mother's bosom, the world began again 

& my small mouth bleat faith, a buoyancy 

Lower than grief, but growing in hope: 

A psalm that reverberates in the milk 

Bones of bodies losing their way through 

The wrongness of seasons with only the 

Monosyllabic words of crickets for company.

RECYCLING THE WASTES OF THE PAST

(Igbo Genocide:1945, 1953, 1966, 1967-1970, 

1980, 1982-1983, 1984-1991)

at the call of the Azan, my uncle drops to his knees 

& bow his head— drunk on the meaning of commitment. 

i am writing this poem as my grandmother sleeps. her eyes, 

two candles thawing in the sun. call us something inside 

our name. my brother’s beard draws hatred. more times,

my tribe is a gnarled thing approximating butcher. 

through any wild & all wild i find them— on the street 

& shadow of the river Niger. & when i see them, 

my compass is date palm, carrots & garlic. home 

turns me into a body unbeckoned. things went wrong 

in amalgamation & my grandfather became a murderer

this is how North & East play nationalism. this is how 

North & East play coup. this is how North & East crave 

revenge. this is how North & East purge themselves. 

these events are interrelated. there is more violence in history 

than i remember. my name hinges on a brown river overflown 

with regrets— i practice silence & spilt milk when i say love.

no matter what was sacrificed all i want is forgiveness—

an olive in the high branches. & once again, according to 

annual reports the highest SDG were achieved by 

the factory of harmony. & i am seized upon by bliss—  

to ache like the sky after a storm.