remember also your children
for they in their time will want
a place for their feet when
they come of age and the dance
of the future is born
for them.

        from 'Beware, Soul Brother'
  

Chinua Achebe is one of the founding fathers of African literature in English, a writer of world stature whose novel Things Fall Apart is one of the essential works of the twentieth century. This Collected Poems draws on his three collections of poetry, and includes seven previously unpublished poems; it reveals a lifetime of poetic engagement with politics, war and culture, inherited wisdom and the making of new futures. Achebe's poems are ironic, generous and tender, drawing deep on the Igbo traditions of his African roots, confronting the continent's harsh realities of violence and exploitation.

Table of Contents

In Lieu of a Preface: A Parable

Prologue
1966
Benin Road
Mango Seedling
Pine Tree in Spring
The Explorer
Agostinho Neto

Poems About War
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
After a War

Poems Not About 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

Gods, Men, and Others
Penalty of Godhead
Those Gods Are Children
Lament of the Sacred Python
Their Idiot Song
The Nigerian Census
Flying

Epilogue
He Loves Me; He Loves Me Not
Dereliction
We Laughed at Him

Notes