NIGHTINGALE

BLOGGER'S NOTE

A Nightingale (Anglo saxon for night songstress) is a beautiful bird that is renowned for it's ability to dish out tunes which are loud, with an impressive range of whistles, trills and gurgles at night and during the day. Let's take a look at one below.

Image Source

You must admit it's a rather cute bird. What does this beautiful bird have in common with politicians as to inspire a poem about politicians titled 'Nightingale'? 

For starters it has impressive vocal abilities very much like some Politicians. Unpaired Nightingale males sing regularly at night, and this nocturnal song is believed to serve the function of attracting a mate. Politicians are nocturnal beings as well, the world over, emitting nocturnal signals that attract sponsors and all sorts. 

When a Nightingale sings at dawn, during the hour before sunrise, it is assumed to be important in defending the bird's territory. Same for politicians, political debates, campaign ad smears etc. Nightingales sing even more loudly in urban or near-urban environments, in order to overcome the background noise. Politicians sing and chirp the loudest in our urban centers that constitute the bulk of informed opinions or background noise if you like.

I'm sure by this time you get my drift. Not surprisingly the Nightingale has inspired poets and poetry through the ages. Aristophanes' Birds and Callimachus both evoke the bird's song as a form of poetry. Virgil compares a mourning Orpheus to the “lament of the nightingale”. John Milton in the 17th century in "L'Allegro" characterizes Shakespeare as a nightingale warbling “his native woodnotes wilde” (line 136). Andrew Marvell in his "On Paradise Lost" subsequently described Milton's Paradise Lost in similar terms. In Sonnet 102 Shakespeare compares his love poetry to the song of the nightingale (Philomel). Coleridge and Wordsworth saw the nightingale more as an instance of natural poetic creation: the nightingale became a voice of nature. John Keats' "Ode to a Nightingale" pictures the nightingale as an idealized poet who has achieved the poetry that Keats longs to write and so on and so forth.

Most of the portrayal of the Nightingale in poetry has been positive and rightly so if you ask me.

In today's poetry the persona takes a different approach. An approach informed by the metaphor of the singing Nightingale. The persona admonishes his people to disregard the song of the Nightingale. Here the Nightingale refers to the political class or politicians whose inspiration to serve the people emanates not from any genuine sense of service but rather has an origin in personal aggrandizement. 

The persona assumes the aura of a sage who is not hard at sight and sees what the rest of society neglects or fails to see. He like a prophet, sees the insincerity inherent in the political shrills and predicts that the Nightingale on assuming power would exploit and ignore the very people that danced to his tunes and elevated him into the nest of power.

How do I know all these? 

I know because I wrote the poem. The date was March 30th, 2002. The setting that inspired by the Nigerian   political climate at the beginning of the eve of the 2003 General elections. With events of the past few years vindicating the persona's negative perception of the Nightingale's song in that milieu and indeed to varying degrees globally, I can be forgiven can't I for going against the grain? 

Yet I must admit that the comparison to a Nightingale flatters some politicians. Some don't even win on the strength of their own songs. They just assume wings on the basis of primordial sentiments which has no connection to the real living issues of the day and somehow fly into our political nest high up the tree from where they look at the rest of us mere mortals with disdain.

Well I have ranted long enough. If you are curious about the range of sounds a Nightingale makes (chances are that you would have heard one sing in your lifetime!) you can take a look at the video below but first here is the poem beneath. Enjoy! 

POEM

NIGHTINGALE

Strain your ears You hard at sight

visible rays herald the day.

sotto voce emanates; laden with

moist and tremble.

Cantankerous concertos,

flying petrified astride Niger’s bank. 

Unleashment by concatenated concupiscence,

bravadoic chirps of bereft birds. 

Strain your ears You hard at sight!

Mucous abscess of a croak

to the uninitiated is melodious rendition

Nightingale's inspiration sudden! – 

begotten by endomorphic certainty and Aso's meal.

Strain your ears You hard at sight!

The song precedes the flight;

the gospel, the gain;

the scent, the stench!

But when Nightingale perches

affectations like butter sotto voce clogs.

Strain your ears You hard at sight!

cocooned in our cozy nest

Nightingale squeals impervious of earlier songs!

Strain your ears, seeing not, hear!

At the approach of dusk

these lies, bare faced, will reveal;

perching high, rendition forgotten

stomach stuffed with our commonwealth

as curled in a corner, Nightingale sleeps.

Uche Okorie

March 30th, 2002