the mystic drum

University of Massachusetts Boston

ScholarWorks at UMass Boston
Africana Studies Faculty Publication Series

Africana Studies

1-1-2011

‘The Mystic Drum’: Critical Commentary on
Gabriel Okara’s Love Lyrics
Chukwuma Azuonye
University of Massachusetts Boston, [e-mail]

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Recommended Citation
Azuonye, Chukwuma, "‘The Mystic Drum’: Critical Commentary on Gabriel Okara’s Love Lyrics" (2011). Africana Studies Faculty
Publication Series. Paper 12. http://scholarworks.umb.edu/africana_faculty_pubs/12 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Africana Studies at ScholarWorks at UMass Boston. It has been accepted for inclusion in
Africana Studies Faculty Publication Series by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks at UMass Boston. For more information, please contact [e-mail]. ‘The Mystic Drum’:
Critical Commentary on Gabriel Okara’s Love Lyrics:
By
Chukwuma Azuonye, PhD
Professor of African & African Diaspora Literatures
University of Massachusetts Boston
Introduction
In the course of reading a chapter entitled “Empty and Marvelous” in Alan Watts fascinating book, The
Way of Zen (1957), a serendipitous key was provided, by the following statement from the teachings of
Chinese Zen master,1 Ch’ing Yuän Wei-hsin (1067-1120), to the structure and meaning of the experience dramatized in Gabriel Okara’s most famous love poem, “The Mystic Drum”: 2
Before I had studied Zen for thirty years, I saw mountains as mountains and waters as waters. When I arrived at a more intimate knowledge, I came to the point where I saw the mountains are not mountains, and waters are not waters. But now that I have got its very substance I am at rest. For it’s just now that I see mountains

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