Waters have carried my boat
wherever they had their way,
which is everywhere on earth,
My course ran through the clear
and dark rivers I recognized
signs of imminent downpours,
and none drowned me the length
of the overcast sky through which
shone a veil-wearing star.
Migrant birds kept me company
and broke the silence and chill
visions of flames incensed paddles
to redouble their strokes.
my thirst never left me
despite the battering waves
there wasn’t always a shore at hand
My heart still burns from storms
though I have been back home.
Waters give me power
to contain unforeseen flames (The Course of Waters, 12).The deployment of maritime metaphors reinforces the persona’s consciousness of his
spatial origin. Again, these metaphors and the import they bear are therapeutic in
themselves as they intervene to soothe the migrant mind, reconciling him to the distant
happenings of home. That is, there is an undeniable sense of alienation that attends the
deracination that the migrant suffers. However, the enormity of the deracination is
extenuated and moderated through the succour that comes with the utility of social
symbols of culture and communication through which an individual’s fraternity with his
original social milieu is negotiated. Nevertheless, it is crucial to ask, how far can the
utility of social and cultural symbols of homeland compensate for the uprooting? The
question is the more pertinent in view of the coerciveness of the uprooting that has in the
first place occasioned the search for reconciling the paradox that is precipitated in the
efforts of reaching out to homeland through the creative simulation of allegories of home
culture in exile?
“Colour Me” provides the earliest indication that, even when rated among the best
beneficiaries of cosmopolitanism in the North, the condition of African exile and the
chasm it creates between homes do not provide the desired sense of actualization.
Autobiographical in texture, the poem navigates through memories of childhood to