There Was a Country: A Personal History of Biafra

his face and chest. . . . We

laughed at his screams the fool-man

who would see what eyes

are forbidden, the hungry-eyed

man, the look-look man, the

itching man bent to drag

into daylight fearful signs

hidden away from our safety

at the creation of the world.

He was always against

blindness, you know, our quiet

sober blindness, our lazy—he called

it—blindness. And for

his pains? A turbulent, torrential

cascading blindness behind

a Congo river of blood. He sat

backstage then behind his flaming red

curtain and groaned in

the pain his fingers unlocked, in the

rainstorm of blows loosed on his head

by the wild avenging demons he

drummed free from the silence of their

drum-house, his prize for big-eyed greed.

We sought by laughter to drown

his anguish until one day

at height of noon his screams

turned suddenly to hymns

of ecstasy. We knew then his pain

had risen to the brain

and we took pity on him