Broken English. Heather McHugh
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but in another poem, consider the fledging generosity, forgiveness and rueful natural knowledge involved in the following children's song about the hapless baby, Lagbada:
Housetraining
Lagbada shits in the house
We do not blame him
Lagbada pisses in the house
We do not blame him.
But the flies will give him away.
The flies will give him away.
Transgenerational conversations frequently enrich Yoruba songs and poems. Here is one that demonstrates many of the poetic idiosyncrasies I've highlit in other poems: it is full of the analogical and parallel structures we've seen elsewhere, yet also full of irrepressible expansiveness, lucid mysteries.
Memory
Whatever I am taught,
let me remember it.
When the big fish comes out of the water
we can see the bottom of the pond.
When the big toad comes out of the water
we can see the bottom of the well.
When the kingfisher dives into the water
his brain becomes clear.
When the cheek of the pregnant antelope was marked
her child was also marked.
If there is one piece of meat left: in the pot
it will surely be taken by the spoon.
Everything the landlord does
is known to the swallow.
Everything that is in your brain,
my father,
let it be known to me.
This one's mysteries are lucid in time. It is no accident that in the world of the poet who could write such a poem, the god of fate, Ishu, is able to “throw a stone today and kill a bird yesterday.” The poem is called “Memory” and like all poems asks its reader to circle from its end back to its beginning: in the father's brain is what the son will need, a kind of future made of past. The markings of the antelope are communicated to her child, in genetic memory; and though people may argue about who gets the last piece of meat in the pot (who lives longest), still the spoon (the carrier) survives them all.
There is subtle play on content and container here: the pond and well contain clarity the way the mind, able to remember, does. In order to remember, you take, paradoxically, something out—the big fish or the big toad: its motion and dimension can only muddy the water. The toad is amphibian, it will come and go, whereas the fish will probably come out only once. But either way the big animal has to be gotten out (or has to, himself, get out) before the medium of memory can become calm enough to be clear.
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