This is part of the hour-long dirge chanted by the Yorùbá poet Omobayode Arowa at the state funeral of Lieutenant Colonel Adekunle Fajuyi. Adekunle Fajuyi was Military Governor of Western Nigeria until he was killed, along with Major-General Aguyi Ironsi, in July 1966. His state funeral was held in January 1967. (For a warm appreciation of his personal qualities and his abilities as a leader, see Wole Soyinka, The Man Died, Penguin, 1975, pp. 156–58, 162–64 and 170–73.)
In this dirge, the former Governor is mourned in the terms appropriate to his position as a public figure. The repetitions, the measured language and the proverb-like generalisations are all suited to the expression of public loss. The closing lines (Lines 48–60) present Fajuyi as a man distinguished in all his activities (‘at home’, ‘in the farm’, ‘in the palace’), but in the end departing as a soldier ‘on parade’.
Dekunle, handsome man, hail!
And farewell!
It is goodbye, as when a stranger is seen off to the town gate.
Once dead and re-born, a person does not know the front of his father’s house.
Goodbye!
The stump of the palm tree does not owe a debt to the wind.
Dekunle, who lies dead here, owed no personal obligation
Before he went to God.
As a person walks, as on parade, so it is the soldier goes away,
O child of the big cloth, which makes the loom shake violently.
Greetings!…
This is how people are,
That is how the end of things usually goes!
Look, the World is derisive
And the uninitiated man is happy;
The uninitiated man does not know that the World can mock one!
Make a display of tear-laden eyelids
And when a touraco cries it makes us feel like weeping.
The Soldier should have gone far;
Dekunle, I call you without stopping,
I call you, won’t you please answer?
I call you five times, six times!
I call you seven times, eight times!
I call you sixteen times, where the Olubeje mushrooms grow abundantly and block the road!
I call you, won’t you please answer?
It is all right then,
I am not angry;
It is all right then;
I, myself, am sad,
If you touch my face
Tears, tears, tears!…
Greetings!
Fajuyi it has been a long time,
Fajuyi it has been a long time:
Your father calls you five times, six times!
He calls you seven times, eight times!
He calls you sixteen times,
Where the Olubeje mushrooms grow all over the road!
He calls you without stopping!
Your mother calls you too:
Do you hear her any more?
Your mother calls you without stopping
With tear-laden eyes,
As when the touraco cries!
It is all right then,
I am not annoyed,
There are days when things are like that!
O child of the leopard,
Distinguished prince, it has been such a long time!
Child of the leopard at home,
Child of the leopard in the farm,
Child of the leopard, who wears a flower garment,
Child of the leopard, who has the Ogele dress,
Child of the leopard, clean from top to toe,
Child of the leopard, clean to the tip of his tail,
Child of the leopard, who walks freely in the palace,
Who will chain the leopard?
He is going in the sky,
An aeroplane!
As a person walks, as on parade,
So it is the soldier goes away!
by Omobayode Arowa,
ed. R.G. Armstrong, V. Olayemi & B. Adu,
from African Notes, Ibadan University (1968)
