It is possible to argue that the English-language poet in West Africa is subject to two very different kinds of pressure. The first, arising from his geographical and cultural situation, is a sense of responsibility towards the nation, the ethnic group, the intimate realities of a shared ancestral culture. The second, arising partly from the use of an international language, and partly from a heightened awareness of the cosmopolitical world of letters to which that language amongst other factors gives access, is an ambition to address a world audience in terms amenable to it. Though dying ultimately for a sectarian and local cause, Christopher Okigbo in his literary activity may be seen as an artist who succumbed to the latter temptation, and who in his determination to draw deeply on ancient springs of poetic thought and inspiration neglected an opportunity to speak more directly and unambiguously to a local audience through a language accessible to it. There are, of course, reservations that one must put: Okigbo is profoundly Igbo even at those moments, which are not rare, when he seems to have wandered far and wide in search of a Holy Grail of quintessential human wisdom. Yet for Okigbo his indebtedness to local knowledge and tradition always seems to have been something which, perhaps because of his confident possession of it, he could afford to take for granted rather than stressing as part of a deliberate programme.