Olamoyegun Noah O | Àródan: Patience for Uncertainty | Poetry
Àródan: Patience for Uncertainty
When I was small, my noise clashed with the quiet of the afternoon.
My mother, the guardian of peace at home, found me a chore to do.
She would press the word Àródan into my palm like a secret coin
and send me beyond our gate.
I thought the word had weight; that somewhere in the village, it slept in a bottle,
a shy medicine waiting for my small fingers.
So I carried the afternoon on my head like a calabash full of hope,
dust licking my ankles,
faith bright and unquestioning like a child's first prayer.
At the neighbor’s porch, the search always started slowly.
She opened wooden boxes that breathed of pepper and camphor,
lifting lids as if memory itself could get lost.
Her fingers moved through bowls of absence,
stirring nothing with the patience of an old river.
I sat on a low stool polished by other misguided errands,
watching daylight thin like stretched pap.
Time there had the slow rhythm of a lazy drum,
yet the woman searched carefully for the invisible herb called Àródan.
Years grew me beyond that stool,
but the errand followed me into adulthood.
Now the country itself sends me for Àródan.
Leaders talk about loans as if rain were coming,
promising harvests taller than the hunger in our streets.
But what grows is a forest of debt,
its branches scraping tomorrow’s sky.
The dollar rises in the morning like a proud hawk,
while the naira falls behind the wind
like a wounded feather that forgot how to fly.
They removed the subsidy and called it healing.
But petrol now burns in my pocket
like incense offered to a stubborn altar of hunger.
Students borrow daylight for their future
and graduate with certificates like dim lanterns,
wandering tunnels that refuse to open into jobs.
Meanwhile, the roads become vicious at dusk.
Kidnappers seize travelers like impatient farmers,
while the state bargains with shadows,
counting ransom like pepper in shallow bowls.
So I find myself again on that childhood stool.
Now the stool is the whole nation.
I sit under the long porch of promises,
watching ministers search through empty policy jars.
Their hands stir silence with an official seriousness.
They say progress is coming soon.
They say hope only needs patience.
They say we must keep waiting for Àródan.
And I finally understand the medicine.
Àródan is the discipline of waiting for what never existed.
I Read the News.
I read the news with my morning breath,
and the paper smelled of newly dug graves.
In Odo-Owa, Kwara, the church bell stopped ringing,
mid-prayer, mid-amen, mid-life.
I saw empty pews that forgot how to sit,
and hymn books that tasted the silence after the blood.
Faith took off running through the forest,
leaving behind its shoes at the altar.
Sunday turned itself into a day of mourning,
and heaven practiced distancing.
I stared at the screen until my eyes were trembling.
In Kaima, houses abandoned their owners.
Doors remained open like people in a state of shock,
pots got cold without saying goodbye.
Bandits changed the order of the night with gunfire,
teaching sleep to run away.
Children were hiding behind their names,
mothers wrapped their screams in wrappers.
The village turned into a question mark,
there was no answer at dawn.
I heard the cracks in the radio announcers' voices.
In Kajuru, kidnapping became a thing of everyday.
Men were taken away like goods,
negotiated between calls and threats.
Ransom changed brother into a mere merchandise,
and time into a slow wound.
The cows simply wandered without any recollection,
farms that once saw the plow remained unplanted.
Fear took over as the new local government,
licensing the inhabitants to breathe.
Ilesa stays in my mind, a time before the silence.
Where once drums competed with laughter.
Now the roofs fall to ashes,
and the festivals are only rehearsals of absence.
Fuel is lit like a heretical prayer,
hunger is in the queue behind every door.
Poverty comes knocking even without a face,
hope is hidden under mattresses.
The market uses yesterday very cheaply,
tomorrow is way too expensive.
I write because silence is not safety.
I write from the villages that have been turned into echoes.
From the churches that have no choirs,
schools without footsteps.
They have made a promise of peace and given us fragments instead.
However, women continue to sweep the ruins at dawn
and men still plant cassava next to fear.
The earth does not want to be buried.
If my voice is trembling, let it be loud trembling.
This is not a cry, this is a witness.
Olamoyegun Noah O is a Nigerian teacher, poet, micro-fiction writer, and linguist. He draws inspiration from sociopolitical issues and societal happenings, with the aim of exposing flaws and calling for solutions. Rooted in Yoruba culture and language, Yoruba always informs his writing. His works have appeared or are forthcoming in Afrocritik, MAAR, Kalahari Review, Weeds Review, and The Voice of Our Generation anthology.