Echoes Beneath The Iroko

Men must find their root to steady their foot, for the earth remembers every name buried beneath it. In the red womb of Ala, where moonlight suckles the raffia trees, the elders whisper Omenala like fire hidden inside dry harmattan grass. The ancestors do not die — they fold themselves into iroko shadows, into owl-cries at midnight, into the trembling of drums when masquerades split the village square like thunder. Ancient spirits, starved of kola and blood-song, lick the smoke of abandoned shrines. Their hunger hangs in the air like a leopard pacing behind bamboo silence. The living, blind with borrowed light, crown echoes as gods and kneel before their own reflection in muddy rivers. A child who mocks the python will one day dream in coils. For the earth has ears, and the wind is an old gossip carrying curses inside its calabash mouth. The dibia speaks in proverbs sharper than spears: “When the flute forgets the breath of its maker, it becomes mere hollow wood.” Yet men dance naked before foreign mirrors, trading sacred cowries for silver tongues, while their chi waits at the crossroads wrapped in silence and dust. The moon is not innocent. She is an old widow washing the bones of warriors in river foam. And the night — the night is a black masquerade wearing the teeth of forgotten kings. Libation spills like ancestral tears. Palm wine foams like angry spirits at judgment. The talking drum coughs warnings into the dark, but deaf ears build homes on forbidden soil. Then the gods arrive softly — not with footsteps, but with madness, drought, barrenness, and children born staring at unseen things. O son of the soil, dig your heels into the spine of your fathers. For a tree without roots becomes firewood for strangers. And a people who abandon their shrine will someday worship their chains.