Article
Publicly Available
A feast of letting go
For Joshua A. Fishman, 1926–2015
-
Tope Omoniyi
Published/Copyright:
December 10, 2016
Tonight there’ll be no tears for you Shikl
That ritual was concluded at our final meeting
New York City, July 18, 2013
‘This will be my last public engagement’ you said
Piercing my pupil heart with your transition truth
The tear dam gave way and a deluge
Of farewell tears flooded my face
Gella served me a serviette
And whispered strength into my spirit.
Tonight I’ve come to Murcia to let you go
I’ve got to let you go now
So I can see you in resplendent gold
The garb of the City of Light
I am a hoarder of departed souls
Yours and my father’s before you
The ones whose breath sustained mine
And tutored my steps up Intellect Avenue
The learned say ‘I think therefore I am’
But I know better than their half-knowledge
And half-truths
I am because you were
You were a shoulder for my gangly frame
A pillar and a lighthouse
You were a myth unveiled at dawn
With my gaze fixed upon the glen in Fahey
You arrived in a parcel
Personalised GPS for my yellow brick road
Atonement brought me to you at Long Island
And I remember your tailored chastisement
‘I can’t see the forest for the trees’
My ESL repertoire pondered that for a while
The Handbook of Language and Ethnic Identity
It was 1999. And your autograph says:
‘You’re still No. 1’ to notch up
My battered confidence
The Yoruba say when the rabbit grows old
It sucks life from its infant’s tits.
I waited for you with baited breath
But like a flash of lightning
You have come and gone,
My tits barely touched
I yearned for a Feast of Passover
I wished your cup to pass and let you be
But I had a feast of letting go thrust into my palm.
So, I’ve got to let go
And let you go
They call for tributes here to your name
Like those they package for catacomb dwellers
But before my very gaze run tributaries of a river
And where there are tributaries
The river lives on
Tonight I behold your tributaries
The streams you spawned
And I am at peace to let go
And let you go
So instead of a tribute
I simply say: Shikl, o dabo, o di gbere.
Published Online: 2016-12-10
Published in Print: 2017-1-1
©2017 by De Gruyter Mouton
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Introducing the Joshua A. Fishman Award
- A feast of letting go
- Articles
- Introduction: Joshua Fishman – public intellectual and intellectual activist
- Joshua A. Fishman: a scholar of unfathomable influence
- “Shikl, what did you do for Yiddish today?” An appreciation of activist scholarship
- A researcher writes for his people: who writes what language for whom and when?
- From language maintenance and intergenerational transmission to language survivance: will “heritage language” education help or hinder?
- Language ideology and language order: conflicts and compromises in colonial and postcolonial Asia
- On the relation between the sociology of language and sociolinguistics: Fishman’s legacy in Brazil
- Status of “women’s language” in a multilingual jurisdiction: power and ethics in legal monolingualism
- Translation and language policy in the dynamics of multilingualism
- Shh, hushed multilingualism! Accounting for the discreet genre of translanguaged siding in lecture halls at a South African university
- Book review
- Hult, Francis M. & David Cassels Johnson: Research methods in language policy and planning: A practical guide
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Introducing the Joshua A. Fishman Award
- A feast of letting go
- Articles
- Introduction: Joshua Fishman – public intellectual and intellectual activist
- Joshua A. Fishman: a scholar of unfathomable influence
- “Shikl, what did you do for Yiddish today?” An appreciation of activist scholarship
- A researcher writes for his people: who writes what language for whom and when?
- From language maintenance and intergenerational transmission to language survivance: will “heritage language” education help or hinder?
- Language ideology and language order: conflicts and compromises in colonial and postcolonial Asia
- On the relation between the sociology of language and sociolinguistics: Fishman’s legacy in Brazil
- Status of “women’s language” in a multilingual jurisdiction: power and ethics in legal monolingualism
- Translation and language policy in the dynamics of multilingualism
- Shh, hushed multilingualism! Accounting for the discreet genre of translanguaged siding in lecture halls at a South African university
- Book review
- Hult, Francis M. & David Cassels Johnson: Research methods in language policy and planning: A practical guide
