September 2019
NOTE: Ifeanyi Menkiti was my close friend since 1967 when I was first publicity director for and then chairman of the American Committee to Keep Biafra Alive. Biafra was a breakaway Catholic state. The Nigerian government, Muslim, and they were at war. The Nigerians had Biafra under siege and we saved tens of thousands of people a week who were dying of kwashikor -- the swollen bellies, the hair turned red. Chinua Achebe who wrote Things Fall Apart was a Bifran. Ifeanyi was finishing his M.A. at NYU and then went to Harvard to finish his Ph.D. in Philosophy. He later became the chairman of the Philosophy department at Wellesley. His wife Carol was a returning Peace Corps volunteer as almost from Nigeria as were most of our members. Ifeanyi bought the Grolier bookstore in Cambridge to keep poetry alive. He published my last book Dark Energy in the Grolier Series of Established Poets.
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The young become adults The adults become elders The elders become spirits -IFEANYI MENKITI |
INDEPENDENCE DAY
(IN MEMORY OF IFEANYI MENKITI)
This weekend we were supposed to meet
To celebrate your recovery from stroke,
Me from pulmonary failure.
Both of our doctors told us we were lucky
We weren't dead. You were not so lucky.
All I can do is relieve depression
On my son's porch, watching my two
Grandsons play naked in beach hats,
Sunglasses on the newly mowed lawn.
The trees are in their summer beauty.
It's five o'clock and the weather's cool.
In New York it's ninety, polluted.
Here I can breathe easily,
Two weeks off oxygen.
You, my dear friend, are breathing nothing.
What shall I report to my fantasy of you?
My son has blown up a plastic swimming pool,
Balls are scattered amidst
Dining room chairs, my grandsons' toy truck
Which they'll ride to the Weekapaugh Inn,
To sit at a buffet and watch minor fireworks,
Listen to a band play patriotic songs.
My wife consoles, calms me.
She has organized the kids' toys
Scattered into chaos.
(IN MEMORY OF IFEANYI MENKITI)
This weekend we were supposed to meet
To celebrate your recovery from stroke,
Me from pulmonary failure.
Both of our doctors told us we were lucky
We weren't dead. You were not so lucky.
All I can do is relieve depression
On my son's porch, watching my two
Grandsons play naked in beach hats,
Sunglasses on the newly mowed lawn.
The trees are in their summer beauty.
It's five o'clock and the weather's cool.
In New York it's ninety, polluted.
Here I can breathe easily,
Two weeks off oxygen.
You, my dear friend, are breathing nothing.
What shall I report to my fantasy of you?
My son has blown up a plastic swimming pool,
Balls are scattered amidst
Dining room chairs, my grandsons' toy truck
Which they'll ride to the Weekapaugh Inn,
To sit at a buffet and watch minor fireworks,
Listen to a band play patriotic songs.
My wife consoles, calms me.
She has organized the kids' toys
Scattered into chaos.
© 2019 Frederick Feirstein
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