No Longer Our Country

"No Longer Our Country" is a poem by the fecund Nigerian writer Tanure Ojaide. Written as a dirge, it laments the postcolonial suffering of his country's heritage, inflicted as it is by its inheritors.

We have lost it,

the country we were born into.

We can now sing dirges of that commonwealth of yesterday—we live in a country

that is no longer our own. Our sacred trees have been cut down

to make armchairs for the rich and titled;

our totem eagle, that bird of great heights,

has been shot at by thoughtless guardians.

Our borders have been broken loose

to surfeit the exotic appetite for freedom,

our flag ripped off by uncaring hands.

Counting the obscenities from every mouth,

the stupor, the deep wounds in our souls,

you can tell that we live in a country

that is no longer our own.

Where are the tall trees

that shielded us from the sun's spears,

where are they now that hot winds

blow parching sands and bury us in dunes?

Where are those warriors

careful not to break taboos

who kept us from savage violations,

now that we face death?

Where are the healers who offering themselves as ritual beasts

saved their neighbours from scourges?

We will expect in old age

to climb the mountain of prosperity

which we blew up in adolescence.

Our own country was a dream

so beautiful while it lasted,

and now we are exiles in a country that was once ours—we were born into another country,

a world that has gone

with a big boom.

But we will not perish in this other country.

We have lived through death

to this day,

we have deposed ourselves

and depend on alms that come our way.

We now know what it is to lose our home,

what it is to lose a hospitable place for this exile.

We expect the return of good days

and wiser, will no longer

let them pass from us.

For now we live in a country

that is no longer our own.

Tanure Ojaide, 3-5 October, 1986 The Blood of Peace (London: Heinemann Books, 1991)

Tanure Ojaide, born in the Delta area of Nigeria, was Africa Regional Winner of the Commonwealth Poetry Prize in 1987. He has published numerous works of poetry and literary criticism.