This is one of the earliest poems of John Pepper Clark-Bekederemo and has been widely anthologized. One of the most successful of his poems, it was first published in Poems (1962) and reprinted in A Reed in the Tide (1965).
Set in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria, it describes the ordeal of a poor family when the small shed they live in—the type fishermen in most fishing communities erect along riverbanks in West Africa—is ravaged by a rainstorm. In the assault on the household, rain gains entrance “through sheaves slit open / To lightning and rafters.” To make matters worse, it is dark and the speaking child cannot even see the mother.
The poem starts with the persona situating the incident in time. He admits that he does not know what time of night it is. Theirs is the traditional world in which only cock crows give an idea of time. But he has been forced to awaken because the house is flooded. That water has gained entrance into the house through “sheaves slit open” indicates that the family is poor. The mother is busy moving “wooden bowls and earthenware,” her precious possessions, out of the way in their “roomlet.”
The boy enjoys the thought of his brothers, who are still asleep “on loosening mats” and rolling to the rhythm of the flood. He knows that the entire community is experiencing the flood and suggests that they make the best of the situation “under [the rain’s] ample soothing hand.”
This poem dramatizes a conflict between human beings and nature in which humans are often obviously victims. But the poem does not eliminate the possibility of taming nature if all the resources available to humanity are mobilized. The material constraints of the family that we encounter become a limiting factor. This situation underscores the plight of humankind when the possibilities of dominating the environment are not realized so as to be explored. In this seemingly primitive state, people become helpless and hopeless when incapable of taming natural forces.
The poem makes a significant statement from a seemingly ordinary incident, principally because it is the child who renders the entire experience.
This poem is important not just for what it says but also for how it is executed. There is a deliberate effort to capture the rhythm that the flood produces through appropriate onomatopoeic words (drops, dribbling, drumming). Run-on lines also reinforce this sense of movement and the persistence of the flood. The poem depicts the poverty of the household with the use of suggestive words and expressions (“roomlet,” “loosening mats,” “her bins, bags, and vats”).
Harmony is also created from the way the poet adopts imagery from the immediate locale. For instance, “Great water drops” are said to be “Falling like orange or mango / Fruits showered forth in the wind.” The use of deploying to capture the action of the helpless mother also confirms that the situation is in some way akin to a war.
Even though a certain innocence underlies the rendering of the experience due to the perspective of the child, innocence does not undermine the significance of the issues the poem raises. That the persona renders the incident in the present-continuous and future tenses makes it particularly arresting.
Bibliography
Clark, John Pepper. A Reed in the Tide. London: Longman, 1965.
———. “Night Rain.” In Penguin Book of Modern African Poetry. 4th ed. London: Longman, 1998, 257–258.
———. Poems. Ibadan, Nigeria: Mbari, 1962.
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