SOURCE: "Belief and Man's Faith," in his Whispers from a Continent: The Literature of Contemporary Black Africa, 1969. Reprint by Heinemann Educational Books Ltd., 1971, pp. 315-84.

[Cartey was a West Indian critic and educator. In the following excerpt, he examines Christian imagery in Okigbo's poems.]

The reality of Christopher Okigbo's Heavensgate is not within the realm of nature, but moves through and modifies many Christian ordinances, soaring into the realm of belief and of spirit. The prodigal poet stands a naked supplicant, seeking to elucidate the mystery of the genesis, of his initiation, of his purification. Time is not only a linear chronological progression from innocence to spiritual awareness, but also a structurally lyrical moment in which the poem arcs from the dark waters of the beginning across the waters of noon to the fountain of lustration, to its final descent as the moon goes under the sea, bringing the song's ending. Yet, before the end, the eyes of the prodigal open:

        Eyes open on the sea,
        eyes open, of the prodigal;
        upward to heaven shoot
        where stars will fall from.

His spirit is in the ascent and with the returning cycle of nature's rebirth, a newcomer is born:

        In the chill breath
        of the day's waking
 
        comes the newcomer
 
        when the draper of May
        has sold out fine green
        garments, and the hillsides
        have made up their facés

The invocation at the beginning of Heavensgate immediately introduces the linear imagery on which the poem is based, the finely etched spatial indications introducing less clearly defined metaphysical concepts:

        Before you, mother Idoto,
        naked I stand,
        before your watery presence.
        a prodigal,
 
        leaning on an oilbean;
        lost in your legend…
 
        Under your power wait I on barefoot.
        Watchman for the watchword at
        HEAVENSGATE;
 
        out of the depths my cry
        give ear and hearken.

From the beginning, innocence is confounded by the divergent promises of the elements, fire and water:

        Dark waters … foreshadow the fire that is dreamed of.
        … a rainbow … foreshadows the rain that is dreamed of.

The image of innocence is mirrored in the picture of "the young bird at the passage." The image is carried forward and is now presented on two levels—the bird has learned the power of flight and the boys the joys of innocence:

        And when we were great boys …
        we sang words after the bird—
 
        And we would respond,
        great boys of child—innocence

Soon the song of the bird, which stood indecisively at the passage, moves under a lamp, becomes a stale song:

        still sings the sunbird
        under the lamp,
        stale song the dumb bell
        loud to me.

Within "the hot garden where all roads meet," the song becomes a canticle of pipe organ music, introducing a festival of mourning. Forgiveness to the newly naked at Pentecost does not lead to resurrection but merely opens to a "vision of the hot bath of heaven / Among reedy spaces."

In the second section, initiation is the crisscrossing of lines in the synthesis of religion and belief. The initiation ritual reaffirms innocence through the purity of line:

        Scar of the crucifix
        over the breast
        by red blade inflicted

..…

        mystery which I initiate
        received newly naked
        upon water of the genesis

..…

        Elemental, united in vision
        of present and future,
        the pure line, whose innocence
        denies inhibitions.

Intuition and sensation blend and save man from the unnatural, from sham. Through his initiation moral man is led to free living, away from sophistry, and saved from "the errors of the rendering" that distorted logic or religion produce.

In "Bridge" all movement is momentarily suspended as the poet, treading water at noontide, waits in listening anticipation:

        I am standing above you and tide
        above the noontide,
        Listening to the laughter of waters
        that do not know why:
        Listening to innocence…
        I am standing above the noontide
        with my head above it

In "Watermaid" the waiting soon is replaced by an effervescent, momentary encounter with a presence. Images of containment, of vertical movement, the play of reflected light and shadow splice together the poet's swiftly fleeting, but experientially necessary, sensations:

        and the waves escort her,
        my lioness,
        crowned with moonlight.
 
        So brief her presence—
        match-flare in wind's breath—
        so brief with mirrors around me.

Yet after this brief encounter, the poet is once more left alone, aspiring to fulfill his monody:

        The stars have departed,
        and I—where am I?
 
        Stretch, stretch, O antennae,
        to clutch at this hour,
 
        fulfilling each moment in a
        broken monody.

Lustration now takes place, and the poet accepts the ritual of a newly laid egg performed with "thundering drums and cannons in palm grove," and the spirit is in the ascent to the hills, "to where springs the fountain," and "body and soul white-washed in the moondew" clamber to the hilltop. The newcomer arrives, even though in the chill May morning the welcome is synthetic. Yet the fledgling that had stood at the passage on one leg, now a heron, attempts a perilous flight toward the infinite:

        in flight into the infinite—
        a blinded heron
        thrown against the infinite—
        where solitude
        weaves her interminable mystery

Man's journey is at an end; his spirit freed, he goes searching for essences.