The sheer beauty of art, expressed in writing or otherwise, is deepened when particular themes are derived from a known and essentially common cradle but bearing distinctive perceptions of artistic expressions of given innovative artists.
This is particularly true when one considers an illustration of two carvers out in the woods to pick material for their work.
If they decide to work on one invention, say, an elephant, or giraffe, or warthog, or indeed any other artefact of their creation, it is unlikely that they will come up with one identical object.
General parallels maybe noticeable from such artistic works but that is just as far as the contrast between them can take us. The reason, I think, is apparent due to certain inherent factors.
An individual artist is a picture of certain distinctive peculiarities unique only to himself or herself apart from others of a similar profession or expertise. Better still, the characteristics and genius of one artist is inherently one’s possession and, therefore, quite different from another whose outlook on life could be fundamentally different.
In the next two weeks we want to explore this assumption by taking a closer examination of a few established poets whose material is, as it were, from the same source.
I do think that observant readers may recall that in last week’s critical analysis of Christopher Van Wyk’s verse about rain, I mentioned the fact that the piece was not quite the same as J P Clark’s or David Rubadiri’s poems who wrote about the same subject.
I mentioned this in passing and could have left a number of our readers guessing as to what exactly it was that I was referring to and so now I would want to take up our discourse from there as we consider three African poets, namely, J P Clark, David Rubadiri and Christopher Van Wyk.  Let us begin with the Malawian poet, Rubadiri’s poem ‘An African Thunderstorm’:
From the wet
Clouds come hurrying with the wind
Turning
Sharply
Here and there
Like a plague of locusts
Whirling
Tossing up things on its tail
Like a madman chasing nothing.

Pregnant clouds
Ride stately on its back
Gathering to perch on hills
Like dark sinister wings;
The Wind whistles by
And trees bend to let it pass.

In the village
Screams of delighted children
Toss and turn
In the din of whirling wind,
Women—
Babies clinging on their backs—
Dart about
In and out
Madly
The Wind whistles by
Whilst trees bend to let it pass.

Clothes wave like tattered flags
Flying off
To expose dangling breasts
As jaggered blinding flashes
Rumble, tremble, and crack
Amidst the smell of fired smoke
And the pelting march of the storm.

This is a poem from the Malawian first published poet and author of another poem that dramatizes the meeting between Stanley the British explorer,and Mutesa, the African chief.
In the closing lines of his poem ‘Stanley meets Mutesa’ the poet concludes by saying, ‘The gate of polished reed closes behind them/And the West is let in.’ Since we will return to these two lines later, I would request that the reader takes note of the upper cased word, ‘West.’
In our current poem we are told that the clouds and wind of this African storm are coming from the west (direction), hurrying through the African landscape.
The selection of diction is a stark reminder of the urgency and fury behind the wind. It turns sharply, tosses up things with its wild tail, whistles and perches on hills.
The wind, in further graphic description, is likened to a mad man and menacing locusts. It also wears sinister wings as it whirls around imposingly.
Rubadiri takes time to give us a picture of the ferocity of the wind in the first two stanzas in order to prepare the reader for its debilitating effects on the village residents.
As is expected, the children go wild screaming and prating about in the first rains of the year. As though caught unawares women clasping their babies on their backs run about madly too, in and out of their huts perhaps colleting and picking up meagre personal effects for safe-keeping. In the rash hour of the wind clothes dance about but that is just before the peals of thunder and lightning, rumble and tremble and the ensuing fires ofits shots.
Readers with a village landscape background will find all these details so real, exciting and nostalgic. And one would think Rubadiri was intentional about it; it is a background he should have experienced.
In all this, Rubadiri is careful to remind us in the refrain, ‘The Wind whistles by/Whilst trees bend to let it pass.’One would not be accused of entertaining a cautious suspicion about the wind. When it is first mentioned it assumes the lower case of wind (in its natural set up) but later in stanzas two and three the upper case is used: ‘the Wind whistles by as trees bend to let it pass.’
If we were to associate this wind with the earlier subject of Stanley and Mutesa, we would then rightly conclude this to be a case of Stanley’s later colonial invaders of Africa from western empires. The history of colonisation like a thunderstorm came to Africa after the Berlin Conference of 1884-1885 (commonly known as ‘The Scramble for Africa’) in Germany where Africa was divided up by colonialists with no representation at the fateful table from the continent.
In subdued and subtle but powerful images of the African thunderstorm, Rubadiri partly delves into the dark history of our continent. Let us now turn to the Nigerian poet, J P Clark and hispoem, ‘Night Rain’:

What time of night it is
I do not know
Except that like some fish
Doped out of the deep
I have bobbed up bellywise
From stream of sleep
And no cocks crow.
It is drumming hard here
And I suppose everywhere
Droning with insistent ardour upon
Our roof- thatch and shed
And through sheaves slit open
To lightning and rafters
I cannot make out over head
Great water drops are dribbling
Falling like orange or mango
Fruits showered forth in the wind
Or perhaps I should say so
Much like beads I could in prayer tell
Them on string as they break
In the wooden bowls and earthenware
Mother is busy now deploying
About our roomlet and floor.
Although it is so dark
I know her practiced step as
She moves her bins, bags and vats
Out of the run of water
That like ants filing out of the wood
Will scatter and gain possession
Of the floor. Do not tremble then
But turn brothers, turn upon your side
Of the loosening mats
To where the others lie.
We have drunk to night of a spell
Deeper than the owl’s or bat’s
That wet of wings may not fly.
Bedraggled upon the iroko, they stand
Emptied of hearts, and
Therefore will not stir, no, not
Even at dawn for then
They must scurry in to hide.
So we’ll roll over on our back
And again roll to the beat
Of drumming all over the land
And under its ample soothing hand
Joined to that of the sea
We will settle to sleep of the innocent and free.

Generally, the Nigerian poet, J P Clark, is known for his descriptive flow of ideas in his works. He rarely throws about cryptic images that a reader has to stick together to discern the meaning of the poem as others are accustomed to.
He is in a waylogical in his narrations to an extent that one would easily follow through his line of thought from start to end.
This style seems to have been applied in this piece. In here we are treated to a family in a rural African setting, sleeping in a thatched hut/house during the rainy season and it is at night although we do not know exactly what time of night it is.
The speaker is one of the siblings fast asleep with his brothers on loosening mats. What wakes him up is the pounding rain, oozing through the grass- thatched hut with streaks of lightning coming in the slits.
In the dark of the night, feeling drowsy and rather sleepy, he hears his mother’s practised footsteps; she is having to relocate her few household goods as rainy water gathers momentum on the floor. He bobs up bellywise like fish and gives counsel to his brothers to turn on as well.
Meanwhile, water spreads on the floor like ‘ants filing out of wood’ and out on the iroko tree the owls and bats are soaked to the bones unable to fly.  Caught up under an unpresented spell both man and fowl, the speaker urges his brothers to ‘roll over on our back/And again roll to the beat /Of drumming all over the land.’
In an interesting closing remark, there is a summons to his brothers to join the rain’s drumming and soothing rhythm right into the sea in the hope of settling down to the‘sleep of the innocent and free.’
The infrastructure that informs this poem is basically rural, the Ibadan University trained poet returns to his roots in the Niger Delta where he grew up among the Ijaw people. Despite his education the verse is not influenced in any way by his modern trappings.
This is, however, different from Rubadiri’s poem as we have already noted.
As we wind up our discussion let us revisit the South African poet, Christopher Van Wyk’s verse which we incidentally referred to last week. It is called ‘Me and Rain:

Tonight it rains
After a thunderous fanfare it comes down.
Hitting hard against the rooftops.
Thundering at the window panes.
All night through, aggressively
it smashes down upon the earth.
The dogs whimper.
But it rains until it stops.
Pula! Pula! Pula!

Like a catharsis it rains.
Emptying the bellies of the sky.
The September night flows with fright.
I can barely hear myself talk.
I listen instead.
The rain gushes into yards, streets, dongas,
Like menses.
spilling forth the stalled emotions of the dry season.
I listen to the rain.
Pula! Pula! Pula!

It rains throughout the night
And people sleep.
But I don’t. I hear a rooftop
Unclasp itself from a flat and
swing down onto the ground.
And the radio says it is an act of God.
And the insurance company says it’s
a natural catastrophe.
And the Council say it’s not their fault.
And the tenants say it’s sin.

Still it rains.
Pula! Pula! Pula!

The rain is powerful;
It opens graves
It rains on the Island
It crawls under cells.
It remembers bodies forgotten in holes
Brings them floating into courtrooms:
The Habeas Corpus

The rain can coax a flower
Out of the loam, out of the rock.
The rain can uproot euphoria.
The rain can gut consciences.
The rain inspires me.
Pula! Pula! Pula!

This rain is not J P Clark’s rain invoking images of ‘ants filing out of wood.’ This thunderstorm is neither David Rubadiri’s storm coming down in a mighty wind on a village.
This is South African rain or pulaexposing the injustices of apartheid. The poet alludes to the power of the rain to open up graves, its defiance to fall on the Island, getting into the prisoners’ cells and exuding ‘forgotten holes’ to bring bodies to courtrooms.
In this case the rain is a symbol of a repressive regime.
Incidentally, as Mandela was serving a prison sentence in Pretoria General Prison in 1963, the police raided the underground quarters in Rivonia, a Johannesburg suburb and arrested Walter Sisulu, Govan Mbeki, Raymond Mhlaba, Ahmed Kathrada, Dennis Goldberg, Lionel Bernstein and others.
Mandela was taken from his cell to join others for trial of sabotage and conspiracy to overthrow the apartheid government. Such is the power of rain; ‘it brings bodies floating into courtrooms:/Habeas Corpus,’ it even rains on Robben Island regardless.

It rains everywhere, it rains on tin-roofed houses it also rains on hard roofed mansions in white settlements.
Much as it rains to induce sleep in the comfort of a home, the persona cannot sleep because his ramshackle is under the threat of rain.
The roof of the house is ripped off and the tenant is thrown out. The spectacle becomes a public affair with the media and others of concern having something to say about it.
The government sponsored radio says it is an ‘act of God’ (not of man’s irresponsibility and indifference unfortunately). When the insurance company comes in the story is different: this can only be a natural happening with no one to blame.
The Council opines that this can only be the owner’s fault; for others it can even be a matter of wickedness. In a country where inequalities and injustice reign, the marginalised community is isolated, there is no one to defend their cause. The rain on another plain, can mean something else. Its power to uproot, sweep over anything and everything and anywhere is reminiscent of a brutal force, either in this case apartheid itself or the power of the oppressed to face the common enemy in a fight against racialprejudice.
That is what one learns from the lines that talk about the rain’s ability to ‘coax a flower/Out of loam, out of rock/The rain can uproot euphoria/The rain inspires me.’
Dear reader, the gist of our discussion this week is that poets or rather artists can use the same material or subject but end up with different products altogether. This is what we have noticed in the case of J P Clark, David Rubadiri and C V Wyk. They are all writing about the rain but use it in different ways. I hope you have learned some lessons at our weekly poetryeducation column. – wamluk1234@gmail.com