In this moving and powerful collection of poetry, acclaimed African writer Chinua Achebe deploys his prodigious literary gifts to produce verse that ranges from an account of the tragedy of Biafra to an appeal to African consciousness, from a gentle mockery of tradition to a recollection of personal relationships. Achebe's poems are marked by a subtle richness of language, which blends simplicity and eloquence, fierceness and tenderness, and a careful attention to the minute--a facial expression, a wrinkled hand, a sunbeam--as a means of expanding on the more perplexing aspects of life--death, suffering, life's strange inconsistencies and paradoxes. This collection celebrates Africa's foremost novelist as an equally skilled and accomplished poet.

Contents:

• In lieu of a preface : a parable
• 1966
• Benin road
• Mango seedling
• Pine tree in spring
• The explorer
• Agostinho Neto
• The first shot
• A mother in a refugee camp
• Christmas in Biafra (1969)
• Air raid
• Biafra, 1969
• An "If" of history
• Remembrance day
• A wake for Okigbo
• 27
• After a war
• Love song (for Anna)
• Love cycle
• Question
• Answer
• Beware, soul brother
• NON-commitment
• Generation gap
• Misunderstanding
• Knowing robs us
• Bull and egret
• Lazarus
• Vultures
• Public execution in pictures
• Penalty of Godhead
• Those gods are children
• Lament of the sacred python
• Their idiot song
• The Nigerian census
• Flying
• He loves me; he loves me not
• Dereliction
• We laughed at him