Helon Habila

                                                                                                                                                                Writer

HOME

ABOUT

CURRENT

PUBLICATIONS

LINKS

CONTACT

Petals falling

Petals falling

Like tears. Woman lamenting the

Arc of time’s scythe.

Raindrops at night: from sky to rooftop

To earth; lonely like fruits

Dropping in a forest – unheard, unmourned.

All night long, one at a time, releasing

Their grip with a sigh, to fall

Like tears under gravity.

Helon Habila

VOMITORIUMS

In ancient Rome, in the age of empire

And decadence, a house was incomplete

Without a vomitorium. Houses then were

Large and sprawling, covering multiple acres

There were vast terraces, pools and gardens,

Marble columns towered in rows like sentinels

The interiors were mostly baroque: vases,

Busts and idols – Jupiter and Juno in a niche,

Cupid and Venus, in the buff, customarily

Formed the centrepiece; tendrils on window ledges,

Imitation hanging gardens, frolicking pigs and

Peacocks (the decadent seek, often, to overreach

Its possibilities)

In decadent Rome vomitoriums were practical

Necessities; for, say you were an ancient Roman,

Someone of high estate, a tribune, or a senator,

And tonight you entertain. Expected are the

Empress, the Emperor, the great Cicero, and other

Notables. What would you do but inform your

Cook: 'Tonight, go the whole hog!'

Say you were the Emperor (hoary, soon to die

And become a deity), faced with such tempting variety,

And you so used to having it all, which would you

Eat, which ignore; fish, flesh, or fowl? And

So they built vomitoriums.

Now, a vomitorium is a tiny adjunct, like a vestigial

Appendage, fixed to the hall. It could be square or

Circular, based on the builder's bent, enclosed or open-air,

But never large, just standing room for one. (There was

At times, a gilded chair within.) a towel hung from an

Ivory stand; a washing bowl rested on a marble ledge.

Finally another bowl, of polished silver, stood as

Receptacle for the rich Roman vomit. It had a trigger

Bottom that parted at the merest touch, and beneath

A conduit pipe quietly, efficiently, sucked away the

Mucilaginous mush.

The Emperor, or Cicero, or some other notable,

Fed to surfeit, would waddle across the smooth marble

Floor, sweating mildly, farting softly, to the vomitorium.

Back at the table, the portly, bald-headed citizen wouldn't

Directly fall to. He must first control his still heaving

Belly, and recondition his sour mouth with some wine …

But not all Romans had vomitoriums, not every

Roman was rich and portly. Majority were poor,

Pressed into ugly shapes by taxes; some were slaves

From Britain, Gaul and Africa. And there were the

Christians who lived chiefly on fish, themselves fodder

For Coliseum lions.

Helon Habila. 1994

ELEGY FOR A CHILD

This is how the world ends:

First, all beauty will die –

All that is green and pure, all

That inspires, elevates; all talent, for beauty,

Like yours, child, is a great talent.

Then all courage will die – all hope,

All that keep the fires burning,

All that won’t be bowed, cowed – like

You, child, who smiled and smiled to the end.

After beauty, and laughter, and courage,

After the fishes in the sea,

After the leaves are variegated, and

The flowers blighted, when

All songs have ended, then the

World’s roof will cave in, because

When you left, dear child,

The world’s pillar also crumbled.

Helon Habila. 20-10-06

Lagos

1. The Pre-rain Streets at Dawn

Walking the pre-rain streets at dawn

I feel life’s ante rising sharply with the clouds

Dead bodies bob and sink in roadside gutters

Flotsam, like cigarette butts floating on life’s

Backwaters – the staring eyes, the gaping mouths

That have lost their scream, their message.

The gunshots grow louder, closer

The screams grow shriller, nearer

Thoughts desert the mind,

Void, like a post-coup d’etat street – and the whole body

Becomes legs, digging potholes in the asphalt,

Burning rubber, jumping fences, seeking a hole to wait out

The storm.

2. Bus Stops

The hawkers are a blur in motion

Needle weaving through metal fabric

Yellow buses that come and go, their anaemic limbs

Joined each to each by rust, 69 seated, 99 standing.

Prehensile bus conductors monkey on and off running boards

Calling bus stops, places…

Places I have walked on, lived on, loved on,

Yaba, Ojuelegba, Ogba

And I wish I could go further, uproot west

To the sun's nocturnal bus stop, and blink-out

The world.

3. The Door Knockers

At Maryland a man knocks on a church door,

Furtive, a penitent sinner perhaps, seeking absolution;

A lady in evening dress and red lipstick

Stands before a back door in Ikeja, knocking:

A wayward wife keeping a tryst with her lover,

Or a prodigal wife, returned, seeking readmission

Under a VACANCY FOR THREE

A thousand men stand, knocking on the

Iron gate of their aspiration. Don’t call us. We will call you.

Okigbo once stood, naked, leaning on an oilbean,

Knocking on Idoto’s door, seeking rejuvenation,.

Lord we all stand, naked, before the tollgate

Of our dreams, drenched in urban torrents, seeking admission.

Places, Fences, Defences…

4. Oshodi

At Oshodi commerce waxes as the sun rises

Beneath lamp-posts, raffia sheds. Bells. Megaphones. Cacophones.

Through car windows hands reach for ware

But really seeking contact, reassurance, like a diver touching

Bottom. Flesh touching flesh.

5. Ikoyi

Ikoyi lives behind fences,

Locking out the crime wave that daily rises,

Surging, inroading the shores of their defences.

Guards leashed to dogs underline the prohibitive

Notices: MILITARY ZONE; KEEP OFF. And you can’t

Loiter by somebody’s NO LOITERING. You walk on.

You can’t piss, can’t scratch your ass; you can’t

Bask in the sun, like the lizard, on somebody’s

DON’T WALK ON THE LAWN.

6. Allen Avenue

Some mother’s daughter on her knees, behind the hedge,

In one hand a cigarette, painted nails - the red in Coke -

The other hand on his bare bottom, some wife’s

Husband, backing the light, his after-work bag in

One hand, the evening paper in the other, a beatific

Smile on his face. Her mouth stuck to his member-

Remember? Allen Avenue.

7. Victoria Island

Island anchored in the sun,

Treacherous waters lap at your feet, stealing,

Piecemeal, sand from your store: Maroko, Bar Beach …

In your sand-filled waters flows time, briny,

Sowing crows feet on your brow. But

Islands are never Islands without water, and

Water is only water without Island – this is

The pain and the ecstasy.

The ebb tide will take away,

The flood tide will graft anew – augmented.

8. Broad Street

On Broad Street there are no people

Only streams of intentions: sellers, buyers, opportunity addicts

Sidling to you, flashing wristwatches, jewellery, and drugs.

The money changer waits by the kerb,

Catching your eye, beckoning in pounds and dollars.

Floating from Tinubu Square to Marina between

Mr. Bigg’s and Cash ‘n’ Carry, you soon discover

Here all are predators, and you the only prey.

9. The Sub-cities

Doors hang from their top hinges, like suicides

From a rope

The moon hangs at roof level, devoid of mystery.

The harlot hovers at the corner, waiting for the beckoning wink,

The whistle.

Youths in alleys hold roach communions, discussing

Money and other mirages, their hands in their pockets,

Fondling steel, waiting…

The dog and the child wrestle in the gutter for

The bone; the mother squats in the dirt, voidating.

No frippery; no mystery. Derelictscape.

The crack in the wall deepens; the hole in the

Roof widens; the hold on the temper slackens;

The landlord approaches. Time ticks.

In the ghettos people stand on the edge

Of the world, waiting to fall over.

10. The Dreamers

Poets in back-street bars, threadbare in jeans, T-Shirts

And goatees, compare metaphors and similes

Dreaming of London and New York and their

Names on the bestsellers list.

Actors in deserted theatres rehearse their entries,

Their arias, and their exits. Their

Fade to black.

11. The After-rain Street at Night

At night

Insomnia walks the streets,

Legs high over the after-rain pools, from door to door,

Spreading wakefulness, raising high the music in disco halls,

Refilling glasses in dim bar rooms

Bringing ever nearer the gunshots, the screams.

Under bridges winos poke the bins

Searching for sleep’s vestiges

And

Ghosts come out for air, exchanging pleasantries

Recognizing the scene of the last

Car crash, the final gunshot.

Hand in hand with insomnia

Unblinking behind my city mask,

I walk past the cat, past the dog, past the girls

Flagging down cars, past the lynch mob

Past the robber wearing the fiery necklace

I read

The rain-misted urban signs: overdraft, overload, over charge –

But no overture.

Never despairing, I open wide my arms

I embrace the fumes, the garbage, the screams, the gunshots

The rush, the noise, the vendors’ calls, the Okada’s screech, the Cele’s

Bare footfalls, the streets, the screams, the gunshots, the action,

The reaction -

I take the streets in stages

Turning them one by one like pages

I seek a path through the urban fences,

Feeling for the chink in city’s defences.