FOR HENRY  CHAKAVA

The Veteran Bookman from Vokoli who illuminated the world
with the rainbow of African letters

If this tribute took so long in coming
It is because your passing left me wordless
From a slow, unspeakable grief….

The hills left no hint
The roadside grass uttered no whisper
The rain never told the roof

About your quiet, reluctant parting
Before we woke up that March morning
And discovered you had picked up the horsetail

And danced to the other side of the Great Mountain
Alas, Vokoli’s Veteran Bookman has gone.
Unfinished chapters ruffle the pages of our  memory

*

“See you in Kenya again, very soon”,
You pledged the last time we met
“It’s a long time now since you came our way+

And the Kenyan rain has watered many new seeds:
New songs, new stories, new sciences
In our busy laboratories, new modes in our methods of being

Come again and pick more petals from
Your “Flowers of the Rift Valley”,
Multiply your marvel at the stunning majesty

Of the flamingoes, pink and proud.
Furrow through the fabulously fertile soil
Of Limuru, birthplace of our celebrated Storyteller

Whose tales traverse the world. Share another song
With Chavakali High where fledgeling stars groom
Their wings for future skies”

*

“Come back again”, you said,
Your face glowing with that generous smile
Your voice that semi-baritone whose music

Embraced the ears of the world.
There was a redolent lyricism to your laughter
An adorably mischievous wittiness to your humour

You took me back to that day in Nigeria
When I called you “Prince Henry” and assured you that
We, your hosts, had sent somebody to bring your crown

I remember the way you looked at the Nigerian sky
Through the publisher’s window, chuckled heartily;
Then this unforgettable retort:

“First, give me a kingdom, then
A palace populated by restless books
And a throng of willing readers

Fill one room with a bushel of laughter
A symphony of soft whispers
And bubbling wine from your rarest palms. . . .”

We laughed so lustily that afternoon
The sun envied our sport
From the top of its tropical turf.

The book was your life, now your legacy
You read it, wrote it, lived it, pressed every page
Of it into earnestly humane service

And built it a temple in your capacious mind.
Candor met courage and loyalty found a niche
In the pantheon of your virtues

You who threw open your pages
To our neglected tongues
And the eloquent power of their hidden beauty

Sleep well, Brother
Tell Marjorie we are still trying to Make it Sing++
Even as we count the stanzas of Micere’s Mother’s Poem+++

Tell Rubadiri the village still “looks behind banana groves”++++
As Imperial Stanley meets the welcoming Mutesa
Our past still eyes our present from its long, inscrutable mask

Rest well, Miyinzi the Bookman
The future lives on the pages of your hope
We embrace it with literate aplomb.

+ Reference to my 1996 visit to Kenya on the invitation of East Africa Educational Publishers, for the presentation and launch of its new edition of Poems from East Africa, the famous anthology edited by David Cook and David Rubadiri. My visit took me through the stunning beauty of Western Kenya, inspiring a body of poems titled “Flowers of the Rift Valley” dedicated to Henry Chakava, and published later in If Only the Road Could Tak, Poetic Peregrinations in Africa, Asia, And Europe.

+ to ++++ Reference to Marjorie Oludhe Macgoye’s “Make It Sing”; Micere Githae Mugo’s “My Mother’s Poem”; David Rubadiri’s “Stanley Meets Mutesa”.

Niyi Osundare, one of Africa’s foremost poets and academics, is Emeritus Distinguished Professor of English, University of New Orleans.