Siren by Christopher Okigbo

First published: 1964, in Limits; collected as “Siren Limits” in Labyrinths, with Path of Thunder, 1971

Type of poem: Lyric

The Poem

The work of Christopher Okigbo, a Nigerian poet, is extremely difficult to approach, because it incorporates both the African and European traditions. This blending is evident in the imagery and allusions that rely interchangeably on the two heritages. It also distinguishes the technique, which not only reflects the indigenous literature and religious incantations of the Igbo people in Nigeria but includes as well the ritualistic language of Roman Catholicism and Western poets ranging from Gerard Manley Hopkins to T. S. Eliot.

The four numbered parts of “Siren” constitute what might be called Okigbo’s artistic credo. Here the poet—noted for his reluctance to discuss his own work—is “Suddenly becoming talkative.” Part 1 of “Siren” employs an essential ingredient of the Igbo religious ceremony, the incantation, as the poet invokes the goddess with her traditional trappings, “A tiger mask and nude spear.” Having undergone his “cleansing” through this quasi-religious ceremony, he is ready to express his Africanness through poetry.

In the second part, Okigbo draws an elaborate metaphor in which he traces the development of a poet’s career, starting as “a shrub among the poplars”—that is, an aspiring writer among those already established. He sees writers as “Horsemen of the apocalypse,” which is a typical reaction in Africa where the writer considers himself and is considered by others to be the conscience and voice of a people battling to overcome the tragic aftermath of colonialism. Finally, he imagines fame displaying “its foliage” and hanging like “A green cloud” over the world.

The third part elaborates on the struggle of the artist, who creates in adverse circumstances amid “Banks of reed./ Mountains of broken bottles.” The introduction of a line that will be repeated several times, “& the mortar is not yet dry. . . .,” suggests the poet should not rush into the exercise of his craft until he is ready and until his audience is receptive: he must wait until the mortar, or the inspiration and receptiveness, has set firmly. Otherwise, “the voice fades . . ./ Not leaving a mark.”

Okigbo often borrows lines from other poets, and such is the case with the refrain, “& the mortar is not yet dry. . . .” It comes from Canto 8 by Ezra Pound (1885-1972). The only change Okigbo made was to replace Pound’s opening word “As” with “&.” In its original context, the line stands as a warning to a painter not to paint the chapels until they are ready; as Pound says in the next line, “it w’d be merely work chucked away.” Okigbo uses this quotation to clarify the stages of the poet’s development and in so doing lends the rather mundane statement a fullness and richness lacking in its original presentation.

The account of the poet’s plight continues in the fourth part, a series of abstract images representing the trials the artist faces in a hostile world. Once the difficulties have been overcome, though, the poet may be awakened from his dream of creativity and his “poem will be finished.”

Forms and Devices

The lyricism, economy of expression, stark imagery, and emotional intensity of “Siren” draw not only from the indigenous forms of Igbo poetry but also from modernist European poetry, with which Okigbo was familiar. Such allusions as “weaverbird,” “palm grove,” “he-goat-on-heat,” and “My lioness” are very African. At the same time, lines such as “So we must go,/ Wearing evemist against the shoulders,” bring to mind the opening of T. S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” Yet the poetry is not derivative; rather, it makes striking use for its own purposes of the poet’s divided heritage by echoing African and European texts.

Some readers of Okigbo’s work have observed that it does not really matter whether every line of the poems can be grasped intellectually and their exact meaning explained. The imagery, so much of it drawn from the African experience, both traditional and contemporary, may at times mystify the Western reader. Yet even when the density seems overwhelming, pure lyricism dominates and provides a poetic experience more emotional and aesthetic than cerebral. The fourth part of “Siren,” for example, while undeniably obscure in its allusions and abbreviated expression, still brims with a poetic intensity that succeeds in itself.

A passage from the third part of “Siren,” exemplifies Okigbo’s technical virtuosity at its best. Five lines consist simply of “Hurry on down,” each followed by an indented line; two of the lines describe actual places: the gate and the market. The other two admonitions to “Hurry on down” move from reality into “the wake of the dream”; this juxtaposition of the concrete and the abstract is a recurrent phenomenon in Okigbo’s poetry. The final invitation to “Hurry on down” has as its destination the “rockpoint of CABLE.” Cable Point is a real location in Nigeria, a sacred waterfront with a rocky promontory and the place where traditional religious pilgrimages end. The repetition and the rhythms established suggest the movement of a procession through the gate and the market; this section might well stand as a description of a pilgrimage. Then the glimmer of reality vanishes, as is always the case in Okigbo’s poetry. And the pilgrimage becomes the poetic quest.

Another section in the third part shows how the poem gains emotional intensity through devices both dense and stark. Saying that the poet “must sing/ Tongue-tied without name or audience,” Okigbo calls this moment “the crisis-point.” Yet the voice survives and speaks, “Not thro’ pores in the flesh/ but the soul’s backbone.” That metaphor, “the soul’s backbone,” so simple, yet so brimming with suggestiveness, is an altogether original way to describe the indefinable quality that directs the poetic process.

Although Okigbo expresses the fear at the end of the third part of “Siren” that his poetry, “Like a shadow,” would fade, “Not leaving a mark,” the misgiving was unfounded. His work is striking in its technique, both dense and spare, richly allusive, full of imagery coming “from the flag-pole of the heart.” Admittedly, at times the very imagery that distinguishes the poetry sometimes distracts from its clear and concise meaning. Yet, like the oral African tradition from which Okigbo drew, a poem such as “Siren” more often sounds than means.