Here’s a quick note to generally acknowledge the flood of phone calls and public and personal messages to me. I am sorry that I haven’t been able to respond to your outpouring of solidarity on the indescribable passing of our dear #PiusAdesanmi. There will be a time to personally respond. The bleeding Truth is that this Truth doesn’t look like the Truth; the tragedy is too surreal it takes a while to process reality. 25 years of friendship, brotherhood, and collegiality extinguished mid-air just like that? Adieu the great Payo!
When Great Trees Fall
By Maya Angelou
When great trees fall,
rocks on distant hills shudder,
lions hunker down
in tall grasses,
and even elephants
lumber after safety.
When great trees fall
in forests,
small things recoil into silence,
their senses
eroded beyond fear.
When great souls die,
the air around us becomes
light, rare, sterile.
We breathe, briefly.
Our eyes, briefly,
see with
a hurtful clarity.
Our memory, suddenly sharpened,
examines,
gnaws on kind words
unsaid,
promised walks
never taken.
Great souls die and
our reality, bound to
them, takes leave of us.
Our souls,
dependent upon their
nurture now shrink, wizened.
Our minds, formed
and informed by their
radiance,
fall away.
We are not so much maddened
as reduced to the unutterable ignorance
of dark, cold
caves.
And when great souls die,
after a period peace blooms,
slowly and always
irregularly. Spaces fill
with a kind of
soothing electric vibration.
Our senses, restored, never
to be the same, whisper to us.
They existed. They existed.
We can be. Be and be
better. For they existed. –
Prof Nduka Otiono
