We did not say ‘Good bye’ (For Chelva)
- We did not say ‘Good bye’ (For Chelva)
That late noon after the ether confirmed Its earlier advisory, “Chelva is dead” Memory floated down onto time’s stream
Then sighed: Did we say ‘Good bye?’ Do you hear me, Chelva? I ask, did we say ‘Good bye’
In early spring when, weary and pallid We raised a toast to Letters You wearing a robust chuckle I nursing a wrinkled Irish Red (I think)?
We never said ‘Good bye’ Did we? Chelva, I ask We never clasped ‘Good bye’
In the light of that fading day When we mused about the fate of Letters In light our cheer stole from a world Immunized against its vapourings, or so they say?
Why did we not say ‘Good bye?’ Chelva? If you hear me, please say Why we did not bid ‘Good bye.’
Were we so secure in the permanence Of our “translated world” That we could scarcely conceive of one Where we could be lost in translation?
Chelva, lettered scepticism has urged: ‘Sacred idiom Even the Yamaraja’s, is thin solace for loss.’ But is profane idiom, memory’s too, not merely gloss? [End Page 13]
My people, they may roll and toss but Leaves only float downstream. My friends, Okala says it may toss and roll but Memory can’t float upstream.
So you can see, Chelva, why I say ‘Good bye.’ Without the solace of certitudes Memory, though thin as a pauper’s pepper soup Is all I have and all I ever will. [End Page 14]
Uzoma Esonwanne
Associate Professor, Department of English and Centre for Comparative Literature, University of Toronto
“‘Restraint. . .My Style’: Deliberative and Mournful,” PMLA (2014)
“Text-Context: Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s A Grain of Wheat as Testimony,” Approaches to Teaching the Works of Ngugi wa Thiong’o (Ed. Oliver Lovesey, 2012)
“Orality and the Genres of African Postcolonial Literatures,” The Cambridge History of Postcolonial Literatures (Ed. Ato Quayson, 2012)
“Enlightenment Epistemology and the Invention of Polygyny,” African Literature: An Anthology of Criticism and Theory (Eds. Tejumola Olaniyan and Ato Quayson, 2007)
