Francis Kokutse
Francis Kokutse Poems
Oh! Oh! ! Oh! ! !
This is not a cry of pain.
It is the sound of the push of
the pangs of the birth of a tale
...
The river does not walk on its
journey struggling to get
to its destination because
it takes its step in a direction
...
It was only yesterday that l
held you in my arms
singing the lullabies to you
showing all the love and
...
The dead goat, my people
say would never be afraid of
the knife no matter how sharpened
it looks to the eyes.
...
She treads the earth boucing her back
like an Ashanti royal walking towards
Kejetia market with an adinkra adorning
her chocolate coloured skin that the
...
I have deliberately sealed my lips
not because there are no words
that l can form to reply you.
...
Each time l close my eyes,
l experience what the blinds do.
And anytime l enter a dark room,
It tell me what it is like to be blind.
...
It has not only been all dark and fearsome,
This past night.
I had spent the hours tossing like a
log that has been left on the sea,
...
We thought the Lord had listened to us
after we cried unto him to give us a root
when we neared this port that we had built
in our mind to keep us away from others.
...
l heard clearly the roar
because it was not far from where l stood
that was before l woke up from my sleep.
...
We have cried till our tear ducts bleed,
We have looked and not found;
Yet we soldiered on hoping
Until it happened where we all did not noticed.
...
the stars that brighten the blue skies
at nightfall,
sings me a song that;
this is a wonderful world.
...
This Earth, My Brother has gone mad
Because the world we live in now
Has been turned upside down
Like a respected Henor singing
...
Did not your fathers before your father
leave a tale in your household?
Did you not ever have any relation
to guide you, children who come from
...
My village is long gone;
The Koko seller drops a cube of sugar and charges you for two;
The carpenter charges you for things he does not need for your roof;
The husband cheats and the wife retaliates in like many;
...
The less is stealing,
So is the much.
As for the more,
They steal the more
...
It is not the engulfing darkness that l fear;
I do not worry about Kpormebgbe's household;
And l have no problem with the snakes on grandma's farm.
...
Pray ye all;
that,l do not go
before you all
to that yonder country
...
Francis Kokutse Biography
Francis Kokutse, a 1990 Press Fellow of Wolfson College, University of Cambridge is a free-lance journalist based in Accra, Ghana. He is the Ghana Bureau Chief for Africa Today magazine. He also writes for several other media organisations including, Associated Press, Dow Jones Newswires and the Inter Press Service. He was born in Accra, and trained as a journalist. He started work with the Ghanaian Times in Accra and later moved to work for African Economic Digest (AED) in London. Later he joined NewsAfrica magazine as the Assistant Editor also in London. During the 1980's he served as the Ghana Correspondent for for many media organisations including All Africa Press Service of Nairobi, Kenya and Southern African Economist of Harare, Zimbabwe.)
The Best Poem Of Francis Kokutse
Concerto Goree In 'A' Minor (For Maya Angelou)
Oh! Oh! ! Oh! ! !
This is not a cry of pain.
It is the sound of the push of
the pangs of the birth of a tale
that l have carried like a pregnacy all my life.
If it sounds like laughter to you
then know that l am laughing at
their ignorance of our ways.
They would not understand.
That is why they say Maya is a poet
but she is not, it is just the jeliya
that has put words into her mouth to
say to the people of the new world
what her grandmother would have
said in the village square long ago.
Jelli, jelli oh jelli let the drum roll now
because my feets are itching to take a step
and may the women shout to give me strength
to sing the tales that was told me by my father.
There was once Abdou, long before the birth
of Mansa Musa who become friend of the Arabs
who crossed the Sahara to teach us new things
and built the place called Timbuctou.
Abdou's grandson married Aminatou and
started the generation that went along with
the women to the riverside who never returned
because some people took them in an ambush
to Goree, that dreaded island where people
never came back when they visit the place.
Yes, l can hear the winds telling
me the divinations that was handed
over to my grandmother by the children
of Camara's household who divined in
the village and helped cure all sickness.
The spirits said one of our own
has returned in the flesh somewhere
and has been given the name Maya
and she has become a griot like our
great, grand father and sings our trade
in a new language that the gods do not
understand and the people who have
claimed her as their own say she is a poet.
Maya, you are the great-grandchild of
Aminatou, who was like you singing of
tales that was handed over to her under
the moonlight in the village square.
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4/19/2024 1:40:16 AM # 1.0.0.1119
