Abdullahi Ismaila 
Songs of Silence is a collection of 50 poems in three parts, probing (as some critic once said of the works of Franz Kafka), “the desperate encounter between human enquiry and the silence of the universe.” The first two parts deal almost exclusively with the theme of silence, silence so loud it sometimes threatens to explode into violence.
The first poem, ‘Master of Silence’, evokes a zen-like state in which the poet persona reaches a point of endurance that has made him one with the silence. The poem is a mute boast, a sterile protest, the response of a ‘strong weakling” whose power lies in his “enormous resilience”. The poem tries to elicit support for the idea of suffering in silence, of bearing your burdens without question no matter how hard the yoke.
One can almost admire such an enigma who resists …” even the throbbing/of my hapless heart” It is a form of death in this silence, and one is not surprised to find it suffused with images of death in words like; marrow, crushed, Phoenix, blood, murder, and of course, silence.
The longer poem in this part, “Song of Silences”, is more stylishly rendered and the variegated silences make for richer imagery. As befitting the title poem, “Songs of Silences” expounds on the theme of silence, its various types and characters and how it has become a coping mechanism for all situations.
“As scions of silence / we inherit legacies of silence: patience silence / tolerance silence / humility silence / timid silence” There is a gradual movement from the kind of silence in the first poem which is like the silence of the grave, to more meaningful “sheaths of silences,” where each silence is like a sword in a scabbard, hiding in wait for some future action, even if it is a retreat from danger, “like the prayers of a lizard running away from the fire outbreak”.
This poem is sub-divided into numbered stanzas, some less successfully rendered than others, some far too long for words, and some, like most silences, morally and linguistically ambiguous for as Wole Soyinka has said, “the man dies in all who keep silent in the face of tyranny.” Yet some silences are better than others.
They are a prelude to retaliatory action, a gathering storm by the masses of the oppressed to throw off the yoke of the oppressor. However, not all who are silent are innocent. Some are harbingers of misery. “the marabout silence/who cast beads here/and capsizes dreams there/ whose rosary enchants dreams,/by whose clairvoyance/fat gods get fatter” Or like those dark spirits let loose upon the night “in this grisly backwoods/ silencing the verve of virile minds.” The poem expounds on the unfathomable depths of silence, the many caves within – where all kinds of thoughts, some benign and some benighted, may lay hidden. Not all silences are the same and not everyone bears silence the same way.
There are those in these backwoods who grumble in their silence, and those who use their silence to plan, and those who silently blame others in the same boat instead of attacking the real culprits responsible for their troubles. This is part of the problem with oppressed people who are sometimes led to war among themselves, to look for the cause of their problems in weaker opponents because they’re afraid to take on the leadership. Using rhetorical flourishes and copious personifications like “feisty silences/that erect Wall across our mouths”, the author also uses sibilants to create a sinister mood, like the hissing of a pit filled with snakes.
Then just when you think you have heard enough of silences there comes a more vigorous poem in Part 2. Titled “Kinship Songs”, this poem shows an even defter and command of language. Rich in wordplay, there is an easy mastery that makes this part flow so naturally, less truculent than the preceding ones. “Our kinsmen / have deserted / the sanctity of the word / their sentences are conveyor belts / of shallow words / they talk with forkedtongues.”
It is a poem deserving of high praise, and it spells out how our leaders fill our ears with voluble words and promises which mean nothing while they “rob us in broad daylight/… to secure counties/in distant climes.” The silence is now over and the list of complaints against “our kinsmen” is very long: They reap where they have not sown for they “fear the bee sting/even as they lap the honey”; They cause us grave pain, “and lip-service the hurt”; They care more for some dubious tradition than in investing in the industry, so “they make perfect designs/of tribal marks/in place of trademarks”; and they do shoddy contract deals while enabling the capital flight that builds skyscrapers in the West. Part 111 of the collection is titled, Multiple Songs, and contains shorter poems on all kinds of subject matters.
We find the usual denigration of our directionless leaders, in “Mad sailors” with a cynical reference to “A breath of fresh air” which reminds one of the famous promises that turned out to be another mirage, for instead of the salubrious air promised, we are, “Being trussed up here in straits/ we peep from the jaws of hawks/to breathe this wintry air.” The more prosaic, “Our country” is a brutal condemnation of leadership that is no better than “…a den / of robbers and cultists, / they rob our destiny / with the occult and grenades /… slacken their thirst / with our blood;” A number of the poems touch on the quality of our unity and how fragile our nation has become because of all the divisiveness. ‘Our oily Division’ speaks to how the oil boom divided us as greed over how to share the new money leads to calling those whose savannah produced the pyramids used in building the oil industry, parasites. Other poems like “We shall get there”, “Dialogue with Mr Man”, “Naija na Kai kai contri”, “Dumpsite of a country” and the deceptively titled “Nuptial knot” all speak of how the dreams of independence now lie in the detritus of our mismanaged history.
As evoked so colourfully in the poem “Like the plum of a flower,” we wallow “amidst the bedlam of tonguelashing/ to produce a density of dialogue/…but soon like the plum of a flower scorched/with crimsontainted bayonets.” Like Langston Hughes, the poet wonders: what happens to a dream deferred? In “Dream – merchants burden” we see the eternal irony of the ambitious artist who, like James Joyce’s Stephen Dedalus in The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, craves the wing to take him close to the sun: A maker of dreams who could not make his dream come true.
Like Icarus, such ambition becomes, “torpedoes that blast/the cravings they rouse,/surreal worlds torpedoed”. There is a wicked poem about how those who go abroad to make their dreams come true, have to sell their souls to the Whiteman for a green card. It is a desperate gamble that sometimes requires that you forsake your culture and beliefs, become gay or pagan, anything that is required.
“to renounce my humanity / to be an impostor / to be against me, / a pawn before your statue / …to be a copycat refracting / everything you are.” In the two love poems, “Lovesong 1 and Love song II, we see a lonely lover missing the ministrations of his mistress. The mind pants for nourishment from her and thoughts of what he will do to satiate his thirst bring both joy and pain.
In Love Song 1 the pain is felt more keenly “like a toothache/ stuck in the gum/ of my emotion.” It is not surprising that this poem is more lurid, even erotic. Sexual metaphors drip like nectar, “I long to break the hymen / Across your parted lips / With sepulchred semen / And scorch your cries / With kisses and caresses / To muffle the moans” Yet it is instructive that even in the throes of such extravagant passion, the poet persona is concerned about silence, about how to” muffle the moans.”
