“Hope, thin-bodied, is bent, never broken.” The Katrina poems by Niyi Osundare

 

Niyi Osundare, a professor at the University of New Orleans, managed to hide in the attic with his wife when Katrina struck. For more than 24 hours they waited for rescue, the waters rising, swallowing up everything, reaching their feet… All along, the couple calling 911. Around 2.30 in the night they got a response. A woman said:

“Go out in a boat.”

“How can we get one?”

“I don’t know,” she answered.

So I asked her, “A whole city is under water? And there is no boat?”

And she said, “Okay. You stand on your roof and a helicopter might see you.”

In the dark, with no light, how to get to the roof? One of the beautiful things about Niyi Osundare’s Katrina poems is their ability to capture the memory of what New Orleans was before, during, and after Katrina. In his collection, City Without People (2011), he structures the poems in five parts: Water Water, After The Flood, The Language of Pain, Katrina Will Not Have The Last Word, and Afterword.

You’ll have a chance to read one poem from the Water Water category, which marks the water’s journey. The poems in this section, and water as the subject matter, become bolder in their rage, with the waters ‘barging through doors uninvited, like a desperate burglar,’ tossing up stuff like toys, turning into an omiyale–Yoruba name for home-devastating floods.

THE LAKE CAME TO MY HOUSE

It all began as a whisper among

The leaves. The tree’s tangled tale

And the wanton narrative of the wind

 

Then, the pit pat pit pat bing bang bing

Of the hooves of the trampling rain

My shuddering roof, my wounded house

 

A shunting of shingles

Unraveling of rafters

And the wind dropped a pool

 

In my living room. The sky

Rumbled like a stricken bull;

Lightning zigzagged  its fire through

 

The darkening clouds. Wind-driven,

Tornado-tormented, the Lake overran

Its fence, pouring its piled-up anger

 

In the careless streets.

Levees (built with levity)

Collapsed like hapless mounds

 

          Roads lost their names,

          Streets their memories

 

A torrential torment enthralled the city

The day the Lake came down my street

And took my house away.

After The Flood section resumes the journey of a city stripped of all its layers, muddied and murdered, but not quite dead yet. ‘Undertakers bemoan a shortage of coffins. In the twilight sky, a vanguard of vultures.’ The city is in its nightmarish garment, and humor is not lost: There’s a skull that loved fried chicken, judging by the shape of the teeth. There’s an advert, which I find post-apocalyptic, of one of the demolition companies that swooped down (like vultures?) on New Orleans in the wake of Katrina: WE TEAR DOWN HOUSES FOR A LIVING. Someone’s roof is a ‘flying saucer that lands on top of three cars and flips them upside down like beached whales.’ The flood has come and gone, leaving its silt behind, and there’s hope.

THE CITY

Is

8 feet

below sea level

 

The people

are

many, many miles

below government care

—

POSTMORTEM

            I

Lakeisha’s grandma

Drowned here

In her wheelchair

When the water rose

Above her head

 

A good Samaritan

tethered her floating body

to an electric pole

to prevent it from

 

Getting washed away

by the raging flood

        II

Narita’s baby

died in this house

 

The lake stole him

from his cot

 

And gave him

to the hungry sea

        III

Sniffer-dogs

Have just unearthed another body:

 

A six-year old girl

(or therebout)

with her bones neatly packed

in her denim pinafore,

her plastic toy

one muddy inch

 

from her contorted fingers.

She left no clue

About Mommy’s whereabouts

         IV

Another skull

Just discovered

 

In House 10

Road 7

 

Negroid

aged about 70

 

Probably loved fried chicken

black-eye beans and collard greens

 

Judging by

the shape of the teeth

 

We leave the Coroner’s office

to put a name to the bones

          V

A pair of boots

stands at attention

 

Atop the grave

Of a rubbled home,

 

bloated by the flood,

its medaled memory muddied

 

And bravely sad.

Once saw action

 

In Normandy

trudged through purple paddies

 

In Saigon

Everywhere in search

 

of a prize

which eluded him at home…

 

A sad, vacant pair

still in search of their missing feet

          VI

The Sheraton

towers above the muddy mess

 

Its own wound

bandaged with brown paper

 

Once thought impregnable

until Katrina turned its rooms

 

Into a rubble of broken glass

           VII

So much there was here

So little now

But

 

Hope, thin-bodied,

Is bent

Never broken

Niyi could have left to work and live elsewhere, when New Orleans turned into a ‘mighty smelly swamp.’ He had offers, but he did not abandon the ‘sick, betrayed city,’ for what it was, what it stood for, and what it really is (not just the French Quarter), which you’ll discover if you get yourself a copy of his book, City Without People. Moving from one rescue camp to another, sleeping in the fields, receiving help from old and new friends, Niyi’s plight, and that of others taught him a couple of things: how to live with nothing. how to forgive the wind. how Katrina re-arranged his needs, and showed him the vanity of possessing, the horror of being possessed. In the poem titled “Losses,” from the Section, The Language of Pain, Niyi attempts a laundry-list of some of the things he’s lost:

A new pair of shoes

Received on Fathers Day

 

An African attire

Embroidered in timeless silk

 

A papyrus scroll

From my last Egyptian journey

 

A hand-made copy

Of my book in Czech

 

My daughter’s diploma

My wife’s resume

 

A rare, rare photo

Of my father in his youth

 

Tapes of a chat

With my ageing mother…

Yet, I’m thinking, like the Ancient Mariner perhaps, the city hangs around his neck like an albatross. He would not forsake it.

I was shocked to learn that Katrina was not a ‘totally natural disaster.’ The water that consumed everything came from a broken levee, the London Avenue Canal, which was a weak one. Remember when folks put up mounds of earth at the edge of a lake and called it a levee? There was no proper flood-control wall (Holland could teach us so much!) ‘Most of that country is below sea-level. after a few devastating hits, they’ve perfected the art and science of flood control.’ Niyi suggests that water doesn’t like to be underestimated. But much as it took away all he had, “it never succeeded in taking away his tongue–and a sense of proportion and justice.” So he “sings of a city that insists on its right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” In a way, the American government failed in its claim to protect and preserve the lives of the people. After the floods, it wasn’t New Orleans on trial, being debated whether it should have a second chance or not, whether it should be rebuilt. It wasn’t even a money issue (The government isn’t short of that, given its capacity to send millions wherever it wants). The claim to care and protect was what was tested. How much help has New Orleans received? How strong and high are the walls that have been built? What storm categories can they endure? We will see, eventually.

All images from CommonDreams.org