The Mystic Drum - Gabriel Okara

About Poet

Gabriel Okara (b. 1921) is a Nigerian poet and novelist. He was born Gabriel Imomotimi Gbaingbain Okara in Bumoundi in Western Nigeria. After his graduation from Yaba Higher College, Lagos, he worked as a book binder and television journalist and later as a government information officer. He has infused his poetry with images of his Nigerian delta birthplace and his writing welds the conceptualisation and syntax of his native language, Ijaw, with English vocabulary and grammar. He is noted for his spiritual quest and his experimentation with language. He has been publishing his poems since 1957. He was Biafra's Director of Cultural Affairs during the Nigerian Civil War, and his poems of the period graphically depict the horrors of the war. He jointly won the Commonwealth Poetry Prize in 1979. His verse shows how well an African poet can use native rhythms creatively in English. The persona of 'Piano and Drums' (from Fisherman's Invocation), for example, declares himself lost between competing rhythms of the European concerto and the African drums. Okara's poems are interesting both for their imagery and their sound-patterning and sound-posturing.

About Poetry

'The Mystic Drum' is an African poem both in content and form. It uses the poet's African ethos artistically to create a distinctly African poem. Being an African, Gabriel Okara goes back to his roots ir history, religion, culture and folklore to capture their essence in a form which is also its meaning. The content of the poem, as its title suggests, has a touch of mysticism and therefore possesses an obscurity difficult to interpret. The subject is wonderfully expressed, linguistically, in English-a language in a way alien to Africa. Through its image and symbol, rhythm and tone, the poem expresses the subtle nuances of an African experience. The Africanness of its content is not easy to interpret for a non-native reader. But the poem's form approximates its meaning, if a reader submits to the subtle, sensuous quality of its poetic experience. The mystic quality, however, defies total revelation. In a way, this poem justifies the modernist dictum, A poem should not mean, but be.' Its language, however, reveals enough to prove its poetic excellence.

The Mystic Drum

The mystic drum beat in my inside
and fishes danced in the rivers
and men and women danced on land
to the rhythm of my drum

But standing behind a tree
with leaves around her waist
she only smiled with a shake of her head.

Still my drum continued to beat,
rippling the air with quickened
tempo compelling the quick
and the dead to dance and sing
with their shadows-

But standing behind a tree
with leaves around her waist
she only smiled with a shake of her head.

Then the drum beat with the rhythm
of the things of the ground
and invoked the eye of the sky
the sun and the moon and the river gods-
and the trees began to dance,

the fishes turned men
and men turned fishes
and things stopped to grow-

But standing behind a tree
with leaves around her waist
she only smiled with a shake of her head.

And then the mystic drum
in my inside stopped to beat-
and men became men,
fishes became fishes
and trees, the sun and the moon
found their places, and the dead
went and leaves growing on her head

And behind the tree she stood
with roots sprouting from her
feet and leaves growing on her head
and smoke issuing from her nose
and her lips parted in her smile
turned cavity belching darkness.

Then, then I packed my mystic drum and turned away; never to beat so loud any more.

Glossary

Line 1. mystic relating to mystery (sacredly obscure or involving a secret meaning hidden from the eye) or mysticism (tendency of religious thought and feeling; seeking direct communion with God or the divine)

Line 9. rippling full of waves

Line 10. tempo speed and rhythm

Line 35. sprouting growing young shoots

Line 39. cavity hollow

Line 39. belching ejecting out

Explanatory Notes

1. On first reading, 'The Mystic Drum' mystifies, and its seeming obscurity forces the reader, unconsciously, to capture a meaning the poem consciously refuses to reveal. On second reading, however, the reader becomes more aware of its form than meaning, and therein precisely lies its 'meaning'. Like any good poem, this too does not have a stateable, translatable meaning. The mystic drum is mysterious as well as mystical because it is both real and symbolic, its beating is both outside and inside, its existence is both physical and psychological. Though the beating of the drum begins within, it gradually reaches, without transforming its microcosmic form, into macrocosmic reality. In African folklore, the beating of drums has ritualistic, and therefore mystical, significance. Its nature and function is cosmic like the chanting of mantras and hymns while performing a holy ritual in Hindu tradition and folklore. In this poem also the beating of the drum unites the mind and heart of the drum beater with the outer world of nature. A single harmonious world is created in which fishes that danced in the rivers turned into men and men and women who danced on the land turned into fishes. As a result things stopped to grow: nature came to a standstill, man and nature became one, the cosmos danced in unison to the beating of the drum.

2. But this did not last long. The poem's thematic emphasis is not on how man and nature become one when the mystic drum beats within him. It is on the brevity of this mystical experience. The feeling of cosmic harmony in which man and fish became one, the living and the dead danced together, the ground invoked the eye of the sky, time stopped ('things stopped to grow') as nature became divine ('the sun and the moon and the river gods') all this is short-lived. There is an end to the beating of the mystic drum. It is in this context that the reader has to respond/interpret the oft-repeated three lines:

But standing behind a tree

with leaves around her waist

she only smiled with a shake of her head.

This figure of the beloved, this 'she' is the nature goddess, beautiful, hidden and smiling. But she knows (her knowledge is indicated by a shake of her head) that nature can be worshipped as a goddess with a fascinating human form only for a while. When the drum stops beating, leaves grow on her head, roots sprout from her lips, smoke issues forth from her nose, with darkness belching out of the cavity of her mouth. This mystical experience, this trance-like cosmic union cannot be forever. The dream has to end, reality finally has to return. In this sense, the mystic drum is akin to a poet's imaginative flight on the 'viewless wings of poesy', as Keats would put it. This return to reality forces the speaker to turn away from his mystic drum, 'never to bet so loud any more'. But the mystic drum has already created a harmony in which, as Keats in '... Grecian Urn' puts forth, 'Beauty is truth, truth beauty'. The stay offered by the drum is momentary, but it is rewarding, and so is, in a sense, permanent. What human imagination captures, even for a while, is worth its while.

3. But the mystic experience is not merely of the poet's. It is different from the 'Romantic Imagination' in that it is 'mystic' and has its origin in African religion and folklore. In that sense, it is not the prerogative of the poet; the mystic drum belongs to the common man-it is a part of the 'collective unconscious' of a community. What the poem suggests is that nature could be your beloved if you listen to the beating of the drum within. The ending of the poem suggests that one should continue beating out the music of one's drum in a subdued way, and never beat 'so loud' anymore so as to feel frustrated. The end of the poem is positive in that it beats the transitoriness of the mystic drum. The end in a way accepts the limitations of the drum beats in the human context.

4. Now take a look at the form of the poem. The units (or stanzas) vary from lines 2 to 7. The occurrence of three lines thrice, describing the godess-beloved, makes a refrain. But the sound-posturing is mainly achieved through the repetition of words and phrases, which have a rhythm of their own. The lines thus echo the drum beats. There is a feeling of continuity created by the run-on lines. The syntax has a flexibility of its own in that the sentences go on, joined only by the connectives: and, but, still, then. The free verse pattern has no rhyme, but it certainly has the hypnotic rhythm. The theme has its echo in the rhythm of the lines. The poet has achieved a perfect fusion of content with form.