The Lyric Adam
most commonly understood as the objective form of adam.
or—more simply—the speaking voice prompting the reader/witness/man who first sees the body in the thames to imagine adam—to try gobeyond the page/thames and understand who adam is.
adam—the most appropriate and acceptable name—not deriving from ădāmâ.
not of soil or dust but water.
adam—from dam or damnation as in too much water or not enough.
adam as neither i nor you—still always us man and never them man.
newly invented adam overrepresented as the generic tosin-deji-and-waleubiquitous human.
adam at the very centre—neither of paradise nor of earth—neither deadnor living but in fact actually found dead in the thames and actuallythe first man to live.
now adam emerges from the thames pointing to his stomach.
and because—as is recognised in the scientific literature—adam is whatadam eats the stomach points to benin city.
benin city—however—cannot point to adam.
benin city knows only the actual boy—not anyone named adam.
adam—still emerging from the thames—thus finds not only a distancebetween himself and the reader/the passer-by as his body is liftedfrom the thames/the metropolitan police who would name him and claim to be his family but also a distance between himself and home.
but adam—emerged and still wet—has already moved on—howeverslightly—from the actual boy and is looking back from this distance—however miniscule—so that home is no longer so much home and the boy is no longer so much a boy.
oh wondrous and unsurpassable felicity of adam—to whom it is grantedto have and to be whatever.
adam—now—constitutes a unique authority.
not consigned to limits of perspective nor to the limits of intimate oractual experience.
adam now sees the universality of adam.
everything of—and for—adam.
adam needs no subordinate or other.
adam finds always another adam in the adam—another river in the river—another possession in what adam possesses—all the things andall the beings implicated in adam’s being.
adam—waking up in the cold light of adam—unable to see the woodsfor adam.
because now emerging from the thames—after adam—comes every beast of the field and every bird of the air and every man on the block to see what adam would call them.
and adam says—you are now the wet of my wet—the adam of my adam.
Notes:
“The Lyric Adam” © The Estate of Gboyega Odubanjo, 2024. Extracted from Adam by Gboyega Odubanjo, to be first published in the UK by Faber & Faber Ltd. on July 4, 2024.
Source:
Poetry
(June 2024)
