And long for wind-blown canopies of crimson gulmohars!

O I am tired of strife and song and festivals and fame,

And long to fly where cassia-woods are breaking into flame.

Love, come with me where koels all from flowering glade and glen,

Far from the toil and weariness, the praise and prayers of men.

O let us fling all care away, and lie alone and dream

‘Neath tangled boughs of tamarind and molsari and neem!

And bind our brows with jasmine sprays and play on carven flutes,

To wake the slumbering serpent-kings among the banyan roots.

And roam at fall of eventide along the river’s brink,

And bathe in water-lily pools where golden panthers drink!

You and I together, Love, in the deep blossoming woods

Engirt with love-voiced silences and gleaming solitudes.

Companions of the lustrous dawn, gay comrades of the night,

Like Krishna and like Radhika, encompassed with delight.

the tarpaulin flaps are buttoned down
on the windows of the state transport bus.
all the way up to jejuri.

a cold wind keeps whipping
and slapping a corner of tarpaulin at your elbow.

you look down to the roaring road.
you search for the signs of daybreak in what little light spills out of bus.

your own divided face in the pair of glasses
on an oldman`s nose
is all the countryside you get to see.

you seem to move continually forward.
toward a destination
just beyond the castemark beyond his eyebrows.

outside, the sun has risen quitely
it aims through an eyelet in the tarpaulin.
and shoots at the oldman`s glasses.

a sawed off sunbeam comes to rest gently against the driver`s right temple.
the bus seems to change direction.

at the end of bumpy ride with your own face on the either side
when you get off the bus.

you dont step inside the old man`s head.

There was once a young man who was strong and healthy and enjoyed his work. In every way he felt on top of life, and had no sympathy for the uninteresting folk who seemed to form such a large proportion of the population. One day he got an attack of influenza. He had had it before and paid little attention to it, but this time he developed pneumonia and was dangerously ill. When he recovered he could only move slowly. He was easily tired and life became difficult for him. When he was well enough to go to work he found the journey home very trying. He looked at the young men sitting comfortably in the train or bus, and he was feeling tired himself, he noticed how tired some of the older people who were standing beside him looked. Gradually he got strong again, but when he was in a train or bus he now looked round to see if there was any older person in need of a seat, and if there was he gave up his. 'I've got my strength back now,' he said to himself; ‘these older people will never have their strength again.'

When you are cycling and see an old man hesitating on a crossing, don't call him an old fool. He may not hear very well, or he may not see clearly, or he may have become tired with walking. Perhaps he was a famous soldier in the War and his wounds are still painful, or perhaps he has an artificial leg. One day you may go to a war and be severely injured. What will you think if schoolboys make fun of you because you can only move slowly?

One of the things all boys and girls are going to learn before very long is that they are fragile little things in a dangerous world. Your parents and your teachers and all older people have had some severe blows already. They get more severe blows every year. Most of them would give all the money they have to get your health and strength, your good teeth and nice hair. You have no idea how tired they are at times, but because they do not complain you think everything is all right. Well, try to make life easy for them so far as you can, and when it is your turn to suffer you will feel happier for having helped when you could.

Good manners are also important when you are with your own friends. When you speak to anyone, speak clearly and sufficiently loudly for the person to hear. It is an insult to a person to ask his attention and then speak so that he does not understand you. And remember it is your responsibility to make yourself understood. An American writer called Thoreau said, 'It takes two to speak the truth-one to speak, and another to hear.' This is a very the truth important saying, and it would save a great deal of argument and annoyance in life if people paid attention to it. “It takes two to speak the truth.' You cannot speak the truth by saying what think is the truth. You have to express it differently for different people. To some people 'socialism' means taking money from those who have money and giving it to those who have none. To other people, ‘socialism' means State control of industry and commerce. To others we cannot tell a man ‘the truth about socialism' until you know what he understands by the term to you say, 'I believe in socialism', and he understands that you mean you believe in robbery, you must not be surprised if he takes a dislike to you; and if that is not what you mean, you did not speak the truth. If a man says to a friend, ‘Good morning, Mr. A.', and the friend replies, 'It's not a good morning at all, is that the truth, even if the morning is bad?

Sometimes people ask very tiresome questions and we like to make a joke about it. Are you a Boy Scout?' said a lady to a boy wearing shorts, a jersey with badges, a Scout's hat, and carrying a Boy Scout pole. “No,' said the little fellow, I'm two eggs on toast.' The lady only meant, however, 'How nice you look in your uniform; that is the Scout uniform, isn't it?' and there was really nothing silly in her remark.

It is only stupid people who take remarks too literally, as we say; that is, who do not look for the real meaning in the statements people make. Thus, when a friend says, 'You will not be going past the post office, will you?' he may mean, 'I should be grateful if you would post a letter for me if it is not too much trouble. If you say 'No' to the question because you are not going past the post office, it means to your friend that you are not willing to go out of your way even a little to oblige him.

It is not always easy in company to speak frankly, and if you don't want to be considered a bad-mannered person, you have watch constantly for signs. It is not easy, for example, to listen to long to any one person. Try in company to take only a fair s of the conversation. If there are two of you, take half of it. W you have said a little, keep quiet, and give your friend a chance say something. If he does not talk, he probably does not want you to talk either. Many a young man or woman talks away, thinking the company is delighted to hear him or her, and everyone is really exhausted and angry.

Don't think you can say unpleasant things about someone behind his back and not be found out. It is surprising how the remarks usually find their way to the person with your name watched, so to speak. Whatever you say, always assume that the person may overhear, and adjust your remarks accordingly. All experienced people act in this way.

Now here is one of the most surprising things in life: no man really understands himself. What a lot of argument and anger we should be saved if people would only understand this! Suppose, for example, you saw a motor accident and were giving evidence about what happened. You would feel perfectly confident, perhaps, that the car which knocked the boy over was a blue car; another person would be equally confident that it was a grey car; and someone else that it was a black car.

Experiments are sometimes made by experts to find out how many errors people do make in their statements. Here is one experiment which was tried. Some students at a university were shown on a screen a picture of a bull-fight. They were then asked to write a short account of what they had seen. When this was finished they were told to put a number on every statement made—1. if they thought so; 2. if they were fairly sure about it; 3. if they were quite sure and 4. if they were prepared to swear to the statement on oath. Every student had at least ten per cent errors in the statements he was prepared to swear to an oath, and considerably more than ten per cent in all the other groups.

Now how does this happen? Here, for example, was one mistake. A student saw the bull having its tongue out. He was quite sure about it. Yet when he was shown the picture again, he saw that the bull's mouth was closed, but that, because its head was turned to the side, the ear looked like the tongue. So whenever you are arguing with someone about a point, remember that there is quite a good chance that you are wrong, however confident you feel about it.

Good manners come from having sympathy with others and understanding our own limitations. “The truth' is too big for any one of us to understand. “The truth' as we see it is only our truth and part of a larger truth. We should always realise that we are humble, unimportant little people on this earth and try to help the world as much as we can in our short time here. ‘I expect to pass through this world but once. Any good, therefore, that I can do, or any kindness that I can show to any fellow creature, let me do it now. Let me not defer or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again.'

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
   If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
   And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
   Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
   And stoop and build ’em up with wornout tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
   And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
   And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
   To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
   Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on”;

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
   Or walk with kings—nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
   If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run—
   Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

on the back of the wind   

and floats downstream   

till the current ends

and dips his wing

in the orange sun rays

and dares to claim the sky.

But a bird that stalks

down his narrow cage

can seldom see through

his bars of rage

his wings are clipped and   

his feet are tied

so he opens his throat to sing.

The caged bird sings   

with a fearful trill   

of things unknown   

but longed for still   

and his tune is heard   

on the distant hill   

for the caged bird   

sings of freedom.

The free bird thinks of another breeze

and the trade winds soft through the sighing trees

and the fat worms waiting on a dawn bright lawn

and he names the sky his own.

But a caged bird stands on the grave of dreams   

his shadow shouts on a nightmare scream   

his wings are clipped and his feet are tied   

so he opens his throat to sing.

The caged bird sings   

with a fearful trill   

of things unknown   

but longed for still   

and his tune is heard   

on the distant hill   

for the caged bird   

sings of freedom.

All my life I have had to take account of the million differences — some little, others quite big — between the Nigerian culture into which I was born, and the domineering Western style that infiltrated and then invaded it. Nowhere is the difference more stark and startling than in the ability to ask a parent: "How many children do you have?" The right answer should be a rebuke: "Children are not livestock!" Or better still, silence, and carry on as if the question was never asked.

But things are changing and changing fast with us, and we have been making concession after concession even when the other party shows little sign of reciprocating. And so I have learned to answer questions that my father would not have touched with a bargepole. And to my shame let me add that I suspect I may even be enjoying it, to a certain extent!

My wife and I have four children — two daughters and two sons, a lovely balance further enhanced by the symmetry of their arrivals: girl, boy, boy, girl. Thus the girls had taken strategic positions in the family.

We, my wife and I, cut our teeth on parenthood with the first girl, Chinelo. Naturally, we made many blunders. But Chinelo was up to it. She taught us. At age four or thereabouts, she began to reflect back to us her experience of her world. One day she put it in words: "I am not black; I am brown." We sat up and began to pay attention.

The first place our minds went was her nursery school, run by a bunch of white expatriate women. But inquiries to the school board returned only assurances. I continued sniffing around, which led me in the end to those expensive and colorful children's books imported from Europe and displayed so seductively in the better supermarkets of Lagos.

Many parents like me, who never read children's books in their own childhood, saw a chance to give to their children the blessings of modern civilization which they never had and grabbed it. But what I saw in many of the books was not civilization but condescension and even offensiveness.

A white boy is playing with his kite in a beautiful open space on a clear summer's day. In the background are lovely houses and gardens and tree-lined avenues. The wind is good and the little boy's kite rises higher and higher and higher. It flies so high in the end that it gets caught under the tail of an airplane that just happens to be passing overhead at that very moment. Trailing the kite, the airplane flies on past cities and oceans and deserts. Finally it is flying over forests and jungles. We see wild animals in the forests and we see little round huts in the clearing. An African village.

For some reason, the kite untangles itself at this point and begins to fall while the airplane goes on its way. The kite falls and falls and finally comes to rest on top of a coconut tree.

A little black boy climbing the tree to pick a coconut beholds this strange and terrifying object sitting on top of the tree. He utters a piercing cry and literally falls off the tree.

His parents and their neighbors rush to the scene and discuss this apparition with great fear and trembling. In the end they send for the village witch doctor, who appears in his feathers with an entourage of drummers. He offers sacrifices and prayers and then sends his boldest man up the tree to bring down the object, which he does with appropriate reverence. The witch doctor then leads the village in a procession from the coconut tree to the village shrine, where the supernatural object is deposited and where it is worshipped to this day.

That was the most dramatic of the many imported, beautifully packaged, but demeaning readings available to our children, perhaps given them as birthday presents by their parents.

So it was that when my friend the poet Christopher Okigbo, representing Cambridge University Press in Nigeria at that time, called on me and said I must write him a children's book for his company, I had no difficulty seeing the need and the urgency. So I wrote Chike and the River and dedicated it to Chinelo and to all my nephews and nieces.

(I am making everything sound so simple. Children may be little, but writing a children's book is not simple. I remember that my first draft was too short for the Cambridge format, and the editor directed me to look at Cyprian Ekwensi's Passport of Mallam Illia for the length required. I did.)

With Chinelo, I learned that parents must not assume that all they had to do for books was to find the smartest department store and pick up the most attractive-looking book in stock. Our complacency was well and truly rebuked by the poison we now saw wrapped and taken home to our little girl. I learned that if I wanted a safe book for my child I should at least read it through and at best write it myself.

Our second daughter, Nwando, gave us a variation on Chinelo's theme eight years later. The year was 1972 and the place Amherst, Massachusetts, where I had retreated with my family after the catastrophic Biafran civil war. I had been invited to teach at the university, and my wife had decided to complete her graduate studies. We enrolled our three older children in various Amherst schools and Nwando, who was two and a half, in a nursery school. And she thoroughly hated it. At first we thought it was a passing problem for a child who had never left home before. But it was more than that. Every morning as I dropped her off she would cry with such intensity I would keep hearing her in my head all three miles back. And in the afternoon, when I went back for her, she would seem so desolate. Apparently she would have said not a single word to anybody all day.

As I had the task of driving her to this school every morning, I began to dread mornings as much as she did. But in the end we struck a bargain that solved the problem. I had to tell her a story all the way to school if she promised not to cry when I dropped her off. Very soon she added another story all the way back. The agreement, needless to say, taxed my repertory of known and fudged stories to the utmost. But it worked. Nwando was no longer crying. By the year's end she had become such a success in her school that many of her little American schoolmates had begun to call their school Nwando-haven instead of its proper name, Wonderhaven.

2009