{"id":825,"date":"2010-09-24T14:21:09","date_gmt":"2010-09-24T14:21:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ink.verticalplus.co.uk\/archive\/?p=825"},"modified":"2010-09-24T14:21:09","modified_gmt":"2010-09-24T14:21:09","slug":"this-is-not-a-land-of-terror","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/this-is-not-a-land-of-terror\/","title":{"rendered":"This is not a land of terror"},"content":{"rendered":"

Next week \u2013 on the 1st October to be exact \u2013 sees the 50th anniversary of Nigeria's independence from the United Kingdom. Here is a timely poem on that topic by Nnorom Azuonye…<\/span>



This Land is not a Land of Terror<\/span>
to Ayogu Eze<\/span>
 <\/span>
\u2028\u2028My first clothes were sewn by defiant tailors<\/span>
\u2028in fabric of blood, night, and unripe horizontals,<\/span>
emblazoned with a badge of the purest fiery gold;<\/span>
\u2028the eleven-tongued fireball rolling on a plank.\u2028\u2028<\/span>

At three, naked to my boyhood sack, I nosed smoke<\/span>
\u2028from that bonfire of the vanquished in my hometown;\u2028<\/span>
there, my clothes were cremated with a hundred others,<\/span>
\u2028together with our bottle, our pride, our story.\u2028\u2028<\/span>

Now you ask <\/span>was there anything worth dying for<\/span>?\u2028<\/span>
A different today would have been a special gift,\u2028<\/span>
meaning I could justly protest: our land is not a land \u2028<\/span>
of terror, despite the Umar Abdulmuttalab factor.\u2028\u2028<\/span>

You remind me of my phone call to Aba yesterday,\u2028<\/span>
a call reporting fire fights just like the old Biafra days;<\/span>
\u2028a bank robbery at Osisioma, seven policemen shot dead\u2028<\/span>
in mid-afternoon, as frightened men pack and leave town.\u2028\u2028<\/span>

Yet, this land is not a land of terror. At least, not <\/span>
\u2028in the traditional sense of terrorism; we don\u2019t desire\u2028<\/span>
immortality bad enough to stain our hands with blood.\u2028<\/span>
We never honour a murderer\u2019s family above others.\u2028\u2028<\/span>

There\u2019s only the little inconvenience of hiring soldiers\u2028<\/span>
to protect us when we return to our villages for palm wine,<\/span>
\u2028to renew ourselves, marry, build, or bury our parents,<\/span>
\u2028lest we become borrowed by the vicious, until ransomed.\u2028\u2028<\/span>

This land is not a land of terror. It\u2019s just jobless kids<\/span>
\u2028horsing around with assault rifles and large car boots\u2028<\/span>
for carting away their human cargo \u2013 dead or alive.\u2028<\/span>
Ah! We strenuously refuse to be branded a terrorist land.<\/span>



* Nnorom Azuonye<\/span> is the publisher of the online magazines <\/span>Sentinel Literary Quarterly, Sentinel Nigeria<\/span> and <\/span>Nollywood Focu<\/span>s. With publications in several international journals including <\/span>Ink Sweat and Tears, Orbis, DrumVoices Revue, Maple Tree Literary Supplement, Eclectica<\/span> and <\/span>Agenda<\/span>, his books include <\/span>Blue Hyacinths<\/span> (2010: ed. with Geoff Stevens), <\/span>The Bridge Selection: Poems for the Road<\/span> (2005), and <\/span>Letter to God & Other Poems<\/span> (2003). He lives in London with his wife Thelma, son Arinze and daughter Nwachi.<\/span>

<\/font>\u2028<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Next week \u2013 on the 1st October to be exact \u2013 sees the 50th anniversary of Nigeria's independence from the United Kingdom. Here is a timely poem on that topic by Nnorom Azuonye…This Land is not a Land of Terrorto Ayogu Eze \u2028\u2028My first clothes were sewn by defiant tailors\u2028in fabric of blood, night, and unripe […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-825","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/825","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=825"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/825\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=825"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=825"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=825"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}