goes completely unacknowledged as people bask in the infrastructural wonders that the
cities provide. It accounts for why the persona refuses to tow the popular path of praise
singing about the wonders of western cities; instead he questions the artificiality of the
manipulation by which “the vulture” “translates beauty/ into marketable beef”. Thus the
artificiality of conditions in western cities forces a comparative response on his
consciousness as he remembers home and declares “The sunbird left behind/can never be
matched/ by this made-up face”.
The anger and pain of uprooting are on the ascent in “I am the Iroko”, which as usual,
deploys tropes and images of movement and migration textured in riverine metaphors to
articulate the continual deracination of the persona. The self awareness of his migrant
condition and the dislocation from home nevertheless inspires some kind of
compensatory therapy by which “Migrating birds/ carry home my name” (19). The
greater consolation comes from the cosmopolitan advantage that his status has been
invested with, and it does appear that for the moment the invocation of memories of
home with a national and subnational tenacity will compensate for the alienation and
inadequacies of exile: “The salt I imbibed/ from the old nursery/ fortifies the body/& foils
predictions/ of early stunting./ Once driftwood, then transplant; I am still/the Iroko” (20).
If the idea of “driftwood” speaks to the desperate moments of instability in the life of an
exile, the notion of “transplant” points to a reconciliation to the fact of accepting that
another home can be built far away from home where the status of home can be garnered
again; hence “I am still/ the Iroko”. But to what extent can one take seriously this attempt
to equate an exile’s status with that of a home-based figure?
There is a growing tendency on the part of African intellectuals to obscure and underplay
their exile status by claiming to be willing beneficiaries of contemporary cosmopolitan
cultures which, sad enough, are perceived to be located almost exclusively in the West.
Truly some are qualified to fall within the category of cosmopolitans, highbrow migrant
workers who would still have been away from home if the conditions were attractive and
stable on all fronts. But as things stand today, even at his best, the self-professed African
cosmopolitan in the West is only engaging with an exercise in illusion through