Erinola E Daranijo

If a Nigerian Cannot Speak His Language

My grandfather asks me to bring his ogùn [medicine] from his room,
but I confuse it with ogun [war] and look within myself only to find nothing.

           Papa tells me the absence of war does not mean peace,
         so I return to grandfather to tell him I found no war.

He knocks my head and says, “iwo omo òyìnbó yi.”
I apologize in English and sit beside him.

          He looks out to the sky and then back at me.
          “Òjò ti fẹrẹ rọ,” he says through grunts.

But I confuse òjò [rain] for ojo [coward] and I begin to fall
because Papa tells me a man who knows not his language

          is like a coward. That a man who loves another man is a coward.
          When Mama was still alive, she called Papa Baálé [husband]

but I confused it for Baálẹ [Lord], and in my dreams,
Papa became a God.

          Grandfather tells me that you have mastered
          a language the moment you begin to dream in it.

He calls me òmùgọ, a word he won’t translate
but I know is an insult by the way it undoes my name.

          So I swallow it with a grain of salt [iyọ]. The day
          grandfather started vomiting and convulsing

I kept shouting, “ogun, ogun, ogun.” I was calling for someone
to bring me his medicine but all I kept saying was “war.”

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Erinola E Daranijo (he/him) is a Nigerian writer. Shortlisted for the African Writers' Award for Poetry and longlisted for the SEVHAGE Short Fiction Prize, he is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of Akéwì Magazine. His works appear/are forthcoming in Isele Magazine, Kalahari Review, Brittle Paper, Hooghly Review, Rising Phoenix Review, The B'K, Paper Lanterns, Fiery Scribe Review and a few others. He also has work forthcoming in The Flute: African Urban Echoes Anthology. Find him on X (formerly Twitter) at @Layworks.