“Rain Choral” by Gbenga Adeoba

 

Again, a child is the missing letter

in this algebra of grief,

 

slips out of the company of broken men

furling into a country of themselves.

 

I watch him meld into the loop of kids

gathered around a relief truck

 

in a procession of songs.

They join arms, hopping.

 

It is how they teach a quiet return to love,

these kids shedding weights

 

their bodies became too frail to bear.

Their litanies echo in the dark,

 

beseeching days ahead to be kinder.

 

A first read-through of “Rain Choral” written by Gbenga Adeoba was very puzzling. Perhaps, even, the opposite of a puzzle – there seem to be no pieces that fit together via the author’s use of enjambment and lack of context. Not only does Adeoba use a poetic technique that’s confusing, a rhyme scheme is nowhere to be found (in fact none of the ending words rhyme with each other); the title of the poem is nowhere to be found either, making it hard for me and surely other readers to decipher a meaning as well. Not only can the poem itself be found to be cryptic, but there is uncertainty in who the speaker is. Even though a first read through of this poem left me feeling  lacklustre and a bit confused, Adeboa leaves only a handful of words and phrases that would lead potential readers to the ‘umbrella area’ meaning of her poem. 

Upon my second read – through of the poem, I started to pick up on some of the specific vocabulary that Adeoba used to give context and guide her reader to the correct conclusion. The first of which was ‘relief truck’. A truck for – what kind of relief? A relief truck with kids – possibly an ice cream truck to relieve the summer heat? Or maybe a relief truck like those at refugee camps? The meaning is still hazy, but it points a reader in the general direction. 

The reason context must be established from my perspective is to aid the search for the speaker of the poem. While the author uses ‘I’ and ‘these’ establishing a first-person point of view, it is unclear who is speaking, whether it’s the author or another entity. It could be that author, witnessing what seems to be these kids dancing around some sort of relief van, but it could be something else. My earlier conclusion of a refugee relief truck then became more clear when I read over ‘their bodies became too frail to bear’, alluding to starving children. While we may know that refugee camps are often harsh and undersupplied, we can reasonably assume that it is the author speaking, as personal experience would allow one to better write a poem about a refugee camp. 

When that general meaning is established, the flow that doesn’t make sense then makes perfect sense. The author uses enjambment, a lack of structure, and a lack of rhyme intentionally in order to make the reader feel uncomfortable, and out-of-place, like they don’t belong. This is exactly how a refugee would feel, inside or outside of a camp. A structure that seemingly makes no sense transforms into an aspect that enlightens the reader about the perspective of a refugee. When I read it aloud, it read much more like a paragraph, given you ignore the structure of the lines themselves. 

Overall, Rain Choral seems like a daunting and confusing poem at first glance, but after a couple of reads and some deeper thought, the reader can decipher the meaning, and empathize with the population the poem is portraying. While there are still a few unanswered questions I have, I believe I have deciphered the meaning of this poem after a handful of re-reads and reading aloud, something I don’t often do.