poems.pdf

Poems by Atukwei Okai
University of Education, Winneba, Ghana
“ A Homowo Concerto Grosso
For The Gatekeepers Of Eternity”
(- a dirge, in three gates, for Mrs. Julia Nee-Owoo )
(dedicated to Frank Lloyd Wright, Andrei Voznesensky,
Kofi Ghanaba and Amanzeba Nat Brew)
ONE: Gate ABIGAIL
“Guide me, O Thou great Jehovah
Pilgrim through this barren land;
I am weak, but Thou art mighty;
Hold me with Thy powerful hand:”
Your smiling Scottish eyes,
Julia,
always parted our Red Sea –
But now see,
You are already on first name terms
With the gatekeepers of eternity !
JULIA, JULIA,
Rise up,
and I
Kwatei Nee-Owoo will woo you
ALL OVER AGAIN
upon the green fields of amiable
Scotland,
along the tortoise-trodden alleyways
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of the Aburi Botanical Gardens
and into
the early morning warm coffee shops
in Trafalgar Square.
I,
Kwatei Nee-Owoo will woo
ALL OVER AGAIN
the apple blossoms of your Amerindic
cheeks
moon-massaged by a touch of bronze
with words woven
from
the clay mounds of the patient pyramids
and the silent stone slabs of Stonehenge.
I WILL CHARM
the cherry blossoms
in your amethystine hair
all the way from the narrow winding
paths
of the osonno-serenaded nightmarket
at Bukom Square
into the jacaranda fairyland folds
of the caves in Papua New Guinea.
I SHALL SEEK AFTER
the warmth of your Sunday morning
palm
with calabashfuls of spring water
from the bounteous bubbling bossom
of the Kintampo Waterfalls.
I WILL ANNOUNCE YOUR SURNAME
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at twilight
into the thundering
crescendo
of the frolicking crayon-chewing billions
of billowy droplets of water
in the violently victorious Victoria
Falls.
I SHALL MENTION
the color of your eyes
to the fluttering Republic Day flags
dancing the okpii and the kpanlogo
above the million human heads
and the prayerfully proud patriotic
faces
milling at the Black Star Square
in your Abigail-beloved seaside Accra.
I WILL CHANT
our secret code name
to the shadow
of the flame flickering like a snake-neck
in a calypso trance
atop the candle
squatting
Buddha-like in the vase you bought
at the flea market in Shepherd’s Bush.
I, KWATEI NEE-OWOO
WILL WOO
ALL OVER AGAIN
the drumskins in your music-drinking
ears
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with visions hijacked
from the midnight chants
in the Naa Gbewaa Shrine in Pusiga
and from the humming
of the necklace of dawns
ballet-dancing
like the Navropio’s sacred damsels
around the neck
of the Great Wall of China.
I SHALL CHASE
the footprints of your
canticle-saturated soul
into the bamboo-bangled chambers
of the Tea Ceremony going on
within the green leafy abodes
of the calligraphers of Kyoto
of the tattoo-carver’s talismanic
Tokyo
and the ocean–worshipers’
Okayama.
TWO: Gate MICHAEL
Why
has sudden dusk descended
upon
our household’s Homowo
pots and bowls of kpokpoi
and the tsile-choked palm soup ?
With whom am l to hoot at hunger
and praise God for the harvest ?
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I HOOT AT HUNGER
I hoot too at the hunger
of the heart,
I hoot at the parting of ways,
I hoot at the law that allows
you to abandon our days .
I hoot at the hurt.
I HOOT AT HUNGER
I hoot at the hailstones
tearing at the intestines
of the bereaved being,
I hoot at the hurricane
of separation.
I hoot at the hurt.
There is a touch of bronze
to the tear
in the eye of the horizon...
JULIA –
YOU ARE ALREADY ON FIRST NAME
TERMS
WITH THE GATEKEEPERS OF ETERNITY !
Upon
the Nakpanduri pleateau of my heart,
your eyes set into flight
the Oyarifa charitable chariots of noon.
JULIA BORTELEY NEE-OWOO,
you are my leap-year jewel…
JULIA AMARTEOKOR NEE-OWOO,
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you are my non-negotiable joy…
JULIA LOMOKAI NEE-OWOO,
inside my soprano–humming soul,
you
alone
are
what the kind and all-knowing God
decided to deploy.
JULIA OBLITEYTSOO NEE-OWOO,
You are my kingdom come!
JULIA AMA SHIKA NEE-OWOO,
YOU ARE MY KINGDOM COME!
THREE: Gate RUSSELL
And when the elements
should repeat their query,
NEE KWATEI, WHERE IS JULIA ?
all the oases in the mirage-mongering
Sahara
and the helicoptoring Batsonaa
butterflies
parachuting
over the rolling fields of Botswana…
all the Samori and Babatu sand dunes
in the Kalahari desert
and the coral reefs of Zanzibar
and Tanganyika…
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all the sunflowers and beaugainvillea
from the Agbogbloshie railway lines
breathing along our cool verandah,
and the stalagmite and stalactite
cold-cast carvings
in the chameleon-contoured catacombs
of Kpasenkpeh...
all the roses
of our arm-in-arm amicable Amsterdam
and the mimosas and marigolds
of Mallam Atta market
grazing at dawn in our Sakley Villa
living room…
and the hibisci and forget-me-nots
in the horizon-hugging fields
at Gbugbla and Gbegbeyisee…
ALL, ALL, ON MY BEHALF
SHALL RESPOND:
I BESEECH THE SUN
to touch the forehead
of Anoshishi Hogbaa
and Nmenmeete Sohaa...
I IMPLORE THE MOON
do tap the shoulder
of Akotia Soo
and Okaidja Adeka …
I KNEEL BEFORE THE NAME
of Taki Tawia Dina
and Katamanso Dzu…
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PLEASE
with all due respect
to the One and Only CUSTODIAN
of the Gates of Eternity,
JUST GIVE ME BACK MY JULIA
AND YOU MAY KEEP THE WORLD !
(14 th September – 9 th October, 2003, Legon, Ghana)
Notes
Homowo is the main annual Ga Festival of thanksgiving and rejoicing
as well as “hooting” at hunger, as a result of the great famine from
which the Gas suffered at one time of their early history. The main
feast is Kpokpoi (prepared from unleavened corn dough) and palm
soup
with tsile and oda as the favourite fish. About a week later, after the
start of the celebration, “the peace of the dawn is shattered by
spontaneous wailing and general expression of grief and sorrow. This
is the phase at which all dead relations especially the most recently
dead are remembered and mourned” (Abu Shardow Abarry).
Concerto grosso, a composition for an ochestra and a group of
soloists. (In Italian, it literally means: big concerto) The classical
concerto usually consisted of several movements.
“Anoshishi Hogbaa . . . Katamanso Dzu”: these are some of the
great oaths of the GaDangme people of Ghana.
The words quoted at the beginning are from the Methodist Hymn
No.615, composed by William Williams (1717-91) and translated by
Peter Williams (1722 - 96) Copyright © Dec. 1933 by the Methodist
publishing House, London.
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Night Journey
The South African sky-scape
at dusk on an early August evening
is bright orange and navy blue.
Poems by Naana Banyiwa Horne
Santa Fe Community College
The waning sun sits—a pretty round orange—
bleeding,
a profusely orange blood that is
streaked with splashes of deep red
across a light blue sky.
Underneath lies a navy blue
sea of blacker-than-blue souls
toiling in white cotton fields.
Billowing white cotton sprouts
out of the head of a blacker-than-blue
African woman, old as time.
My Homecoming (For Josephine from the Democratic Republic of Congo)
There are no ululating women to raise their voices in welcome
to let the community know their prodigal daughter has returned.
There are no carefree children running to embrace me
to ask what gifts I come bearing from wonderland.
There is no council of elders assembled in the hall
to ask me news of my travels in faraway lands,
to express wonderment at the fantastic sights I recount,
and innoculate me against the ravaging desires of strange lands.
My mother’s hearth is cold.
The ashes of yesteryear slumber
under the cobwebs of vampire spiders
who have sucked the lifeblood of my people
leaving behind the skeletons of the dead.
I have asked and asked,
again and again, if
The Creator fell asleep, allowing
the devil to sneak up and
seize dominion.
Hell must be this total silencing of human voices.
This absolute negation of life that
has descended on
the homestead.
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Unknown Soldier
Unknown soldier,
blown to smithereens
oh, so young.
Was it your desire,
so very young,
to become a fighter?
To be cut down unsung?
Dust to eternal dust.
Ashes to perennial ashes.
Sacrificial lamb.
Offertory
in a strife woefully mired in escalating
dividends and swelling bank accounts.
Prematurely-bereaved-mothers relive
labor pains, as future beacons
are raked to ashes to fuel oil
democracies that line a handful of pockets
and hold the rest of humanity ransom.
As long as mothers—reawakened
by birth pangs—reclaim wasted loin-fruit,
the premature deaths of unknown
soldiers will not go unsung.
Alive, our paths may never have crossed.
But tonight, our pains entwine
as I listen to your life story, compressed
into a one minute tribute on Eye Witness News.
Dust to eternal dust.
Ashes to perennial ashes.
Before you were cut down so hastily, you were
primary caretaker of your ailing mother.
Was it your entering the jaws of death—
a mere sapling—that catapulted her,
like a meteor, plummeting down to earth,
to follow suit in breathless immediacy?
Now with Mother ashes
sprinkled onto young graves,
Mother-love will rock too-soon-bereaved
Offspring in eternal sleep.
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I wonder how many eyewitnesses
witnessed you being squashed
like an annoying bug. A surrogate
for an overbearing moron whose dwindled
self-worth propels him to swell his puny
spirit with overstuffed coffers lined with the skeletons
of budding lives snuffed out—
their potential to blossom arrested.
As long as mothers—re-awakened
by birth pangs—reclaim wasted loin-fruit,
the premature deaths of unknown
soldiers will not go unsung.
268

Poems by Niyi Osundare
University of New Orleans
Random Blues
(Census Blues, Naijiria 2007))
People of our land
Know how many we are?
I ask, people of our land
Know how many we are?
The Counting Agents have come and gone
Their counting magic is supremely rare
Cows make the book
In some regions
Yes, cows make the book
In some regions
Their hoofprints purple with power
They tilt the scale in their bovine legions
In other areas goats bleat
Their way into the numbers
Say, in other areas goats bleat
Their way into the numbers
Their droppings swell the figures
Being so proud as our nameless members
The numbers stay put
In some parts
Yes, the numbers stay put
In some parts
No births, no deaths in ten years
Wondrous numerals on the blinking charts
In other areas
The figures swell
Indeed, in other areas
The figures swell
Beyond every rate, beyond every reason
As if by some dark, uncanny spell
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Ghosts roam the pages
Of the Counter’s book
Yes, ghosts roam the pages
Of the Counter’s book
Swarming skeletons in the nation’s cupboard
They come in different shapes and different ages
Here once again
The game of dizzy numbers
Say, here once again
The game of dizzy numbers
Good old Brits bequeathed the trick
To divine teeming crowds in empty chambers
SOME DAYS
(to Akawu)
Some days know
the secret leaning of the heart
their auricles are acres of clay
watered by the kindest dew
their music the beat of every pulse
smiles grow in the garden of their lips
there is grace in their greeting
bliss in their blessing
a merciful moon sits
in the center of their night
their hours ripen
in the shadows of a generous sun
when they pass
houses throw open their doors
flowers drape them
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in their rarest fragrance
for them tenderness is no treason
compassion is no constraint
some days
are not allergic to softness
some days
are not afraid of being human
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Poems by Tanure Ojaide
University of North Carolina-Charlotte
The Minstrel is a Refugee
Before he realizes it,
the minstrel is a refugee
without even a pen in the pocket for possession;
with neither minutes nor paper to scribble the blues
he must sing to carry along the memory
of the shrew that battered him into flight.
Every property too ponderous to carry,
the refugee must travel light in flight—
it’s only life that he carries simply without
knowing its significance that counts.
The minstrel in a black Indian file
evacuates the death-taunting city—
he has jumped from the roof into a boat;
no stunt that saves life is ever strange.
The minstrel seeks refuge in the kingdom
where the house of words cannot flatten
from the mindless cruelty of Katrina; there’s
much in the head that cannot be trashed.
The muse hits the minstrel with a hurricane,
teaches the primitive lessons of a cyber age—
the common denominator of survival for all
surpasses whatever bank accounts or stardom!
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From the murderous one’s fury he flees;
the minstrel fears death by drowning
hence he looks not back at the gorgon’s face
to gather valuables and be transfixed into stone.
The minstrel counts the blessings of a fugitive;
the muse that subjects the caste to calamities
also saves from the road littered with aborted hopes
and makes the favorite one to defy odds to survive.
The song though invaluable is no property that
drowns—even if it goes down, it rises with life;
the song survives unsanitary domes of starvation;
it survives the neglect of smug federal bureaucrats.
The minstrel takes his gruel scrambled from filth
and seeks not the king’s table on a flooded floor;
he wishes to arrive sane with memories of abuse,
his head clean above the muck; nothing personal.
The horizon once an insurmountable wall
beckons with clouds that give way to sun
and always stalking the minstrel
a beautiful spirit, lips aflame—
the wordless delight springs from pain;
the companion thinks of labor, a fruit.
At the taxi station
A Bible-brandishing one suddenly appears from nowhere
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once the car’s filled with passengers and about to leave
to pray for the benighted passengers before the car takes off
for its seven-hour dust-coated destination of discomfort.
He rails against demons—not the potholed bush-covered roads;
he rails against accidents—not drowsy or drunk illiterate drivers.
He wants the road cleared by the blood of Christ—not workers;
he absolves robbers from the road—not from unemployment.
The pastor asks the travelers to close their eyes, which they do
even as his remain wide open, and winces at the rebel minstrel
& invokes Christ to cover the car that’s often not serviced
with the miraculous blood of Jesus; he separates one into two.
He expels all principalities that will lurk along the way
that the overloaded and crowded car will speed past;
he delivers every passenger into the safe hands of God
even as the impatient driver readies bribes for the police.
The holy one summons Christ from above to be the driver
since the paid uniformed one will fall asleep from revelry
& on and on until he concludes with “In the mighty name
of Jesus” to which his congregation on wheels chorus “Amen!”
“The Lord blesses a cheerful giver,” he proclaims as he pulls
off his sleeves all the beggar skills he certainly thrives on
and his eyes roving from one traveler to another for his service,
many tuck naira notes into his outstretched right palm
& cheered by the generosity beams like dawn with smiles
and proclaims “Go well!” as the driver pulls out the station
with passengers who want to get to their destination by
whatever means other than the transport fare they had paid.
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Highland dreams
At this castle height deep in Caledonian country
night’s so light that sleep dreams out its short portion.
Last night I chopped down trees of centuries
and gathered animals and birds into a cage.
I renamed the survivor population of captives
with sectarian appellations imported from a dead country—
friendly ghosts applauded for the adventurous spirit
and I was knighted by the vassal lord of conquest.
If that were all, the world would be the same;
the sane would wish to wander round and see
what new outfit would cover their nakedness;
but we know the distance it took to come this far.
A new tribe of trees popped up with waterproof bands
round their wrists—all wanted to be chronicled victims.
There wasn’t much else to do with the birds that lost wings;
I, dressed in a feather hat, decorated before being dethroned.
My community wins the right to live without fear
and draws up a charter empowering daydreamers
to overtake fugitives before dusk, mend broken bones
that are the bane of those prone to falling on rocks.
And behold: Mungo Park* carries a map that’s
a charter of highland dreams, looking for the Niger
and his poor porters pointing to the great river
camped now to be fed on fish they had caught!
At this castle height deep in Caledonian country
night’s so light that sleep dreams out its short portion.
275

1
·Mungo Park, Scotsman, claimed to have discovered the River
Niger, by which people had always lived for centuries in West
Africa.
written at Hawthornden Castle, near Edinburgh, Scotland. June 9,
2004)
276

Poems by Dorothea Smartt
London, UK
SAMBO’S GRAVE, SUNDERLAND POINT
Is there a boy watching freshwater
and salt mix at Lune estuary?
There’s no proof the remains of any
African are there - a no-name Sambo.
Two days off an unknown ship
and dead. Put out on Sunderland Point
as his Captain met with wife and child?
This boy in catatonic shock,
at the sharp white cold, the earth’s stillness.
The quayside busy with schooners
that kept bringing more. A used Cabinboy,
on a ship’s ten month return voyage
that brought him to no-where, to no-one.
Waste. Buried in a western hollow.
Drawing the curious and shamed.
A plaque, but no body, at that place:
A shrine to undigested memories.
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SAMBO’S ELEGY: NO RHYME OR REASON
‘If I don’t sing you
who are you?
Does not the word make the man?’
- Maryse Conde, Segu
Lying at the site of Samboo’s grave,
waiting, for full earth, to speak to me.
Waiting for buried bones, to whisper
a furious flow of flooding tears.
I’m, held here, at Lune River’s estuary.
Caught in fear, not daring, to go down
again, into the ship’s deep belly.
The slaving schooner, moored off the coast,
its cargo hold, gasping with bodies
unable to stretch out. Heaving I
breathe out; each heady in-breath a dreamcatcher,
shipping me. Into the craft’s
dark stench, weighted with irons, smelling
of vomit, sickly death of shit-piss
fear. The surging, billowing, rolling
never stops, and I bang! holler! cry out!
Moaning, in my body, let me out!
Let me go! Sweating as I reach up
in the black recess, I search for God.
Grip tight to that faith, like a light-shaft,
a slippery life-raft. Calling, Aaallah,
to hold me. Asking Aaa-Aaa-llah
avenge me! Invoke older forces
pagan ways; my ancestors; anyone!
My expiring neighbour; anything
sacred, to spare me from this. Trial
of hopelessness, faithlessness. For months
no sight of land, only the world of
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self-contained lashing brine, the ship on
foaming sea. Men become beasts, bloodied
brutally beaten, raped, spewed on deck.
Lying at the site of Samboo’s grave.
Waiting for full earth, to speak to me,
waiting. For buried bones to whisper,
as a flow of fears that floods. Through me,
poet, reluctant to re-connect.
I reach out, switch on my bedside light,
wake with terrors, that will not leave me.
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