way, it nevertheless speaks for millions of Nigerian and African migrants who strongly
believe in the necessity of return to the homeland, no matter the allure of diaspora. The
concluding lines of the collection, “for you, Nigeria IV” attest to this observation. It does
not matter if the return is in the form of a cold, still corpse; return necessarily completes
the trajectory of exile:
And if my years be blown
Away in distant lands
Like dry millet
In harmattan wind
I want to be buried
In a free country
Among my people
Among my own people
Besides my ancestors...
And as I trail the echoes
Of the valley of death
Among you let it be said:
There was beauty
In his heart
And the Homeland
Was his song. (100)Therefore, although homeland may be inadequate, it nevertheless remains for Oguibe
indispensable, if not for anything, but for its metaphysical significance.
Agbenoxevi as Metaphor: Ramifications of Exile in Kofi Anyidoho’s EarthChild
To be sure, there is an undeniable link between Kofi Anyidoho’s first collection, Elegy
for the Revolution (1978) and subsequent collections; EarthChild is no exception. This
preliminary remark is vital in view of the understanding that there is a sense in which the
socio-political circumstances that informed the debut also set the tone for his subsequent
collections. The incursion of the military into Ghanaian politics in 1966 is significantly