Kofi Awoonor

On this dirty patch
a tree once stood
shedding incense on the infant corn;
its boughs stretched across a heaven
brightened by the last fires of a tribe.
They sent surveyors and builders
who cut that tree
planting in its place
a huge senseless cathedral of doom.
...

Sometimes, we read the
lines in the green leaf
...

The weaver bird built in our house
And laid its eggs on our only tree.
We did not want to send it away.
We watched the building of the nest
And supervised the egg-laying.
And the weaver returned in the guise of the owner.
Preaching salvation to us that owned the house.
They say it came from the west
Where the storms at sea had felled the gulls
And the fishers dried their nets by lantern light.
Its sermon is the divination of ourselves
And our new horizon limits at its nest.
But we cannot join the prayers and answers of the communicants.
We look for new homes every day,
For new altars we strive to rebuild
The old shrines defiled by the weaver's excrement.
...

When our tears are dry on the shore
and the fishermen carry their nets home
and the seagulls return to bird island
and the laughter of the children recedes at night,
there shall still linger here the communion we forged,
the feast of oneness which we partook of.
There shall still be the eternal gateman
Who will close the cemetery doors
And send the late mourners away.
It cannot be the music we heard that night
That still lingers in the chambers of memory.
It is the new chorus of our forgotten comrades
And the halleluyahs of our second selves.
...

The dawn crack of sounds known
rending our air
...

She did not call me by name
Not by the name my mother gave me
...

I crossed quite a few of your rivers,
my gods, into this plain
...

Sometimes, the pain and the sorrow return
particularly at night.
I will grieve again and again tomorrow
for the memory of a death foretold.
I grieve again tomorrow
cull a flower across the yard
listen to the birds in the tree.

I grieve again tomorrow
for a pain that grows on
a pain a friend of my solitude
in a bed long emptied by choice;
I grieve again this grievance
immemorial for
this pain
this load under which I wreathe and grieve

Yesterday I could not go
for my obligatory walk,
instead I used the hour
to recall the lanes, the trees
the birds, the occasional snarling dog
the brown sheep in a penned field
the dwarf mango tree heavy with fruit
the martian palms tall and erect
the sentry-pines swaying
in a distant field.

I believe in the possibility of freedom
in the coming of the bees in summer
in mild winters and furious hurricanes;
I believe in the arrival of American tornadoes
before I go to hunt
on that island of youth
where I smelt the heady smell
of the wild guinea fowl
and heard her chuckle for her child
in the opening light of an April day.

I believe in hope and the future
of hope, in victory before death
collective, inexorable, obligatory;
in the enduring prospect of love
though the bed is empty,
in the child's happiness
though the meal is meagre.
I believe in light and day
beyond the tomb far from the solitude
of the womb, and the mystical might,
in the coming of fruits
the striped salmon and the crooked crab;
I believe in men and the gods
in the spirit and the substance,
in death and the reawakening
in the promised festival and denial
in our heroes and the nation
in the wisdom of the people
the certainty of victory
the validity of struggle.

Beyond the fields and the shout
of the youth, beyond the pine trees
and the gnarled mangoes
redolent of childhood and prenativity,
I am affronted by a vision
apparitional, scaly
lumbering over a wall
raising a collosal bellow.
His name is struggle.
He is may comrade and my brother
intimate, hurt, urgent
and enduring.

I will not grieve again tomorrow.
I will not grieve again
...

A name only once
crammed into the child's fitful memory
in malnourished villages,
vast deliriums like the galloping foothills of the Colorado:
of Mohawks and the Chippewa,
horsey penny-movies
brought cheap at the tail of the war
to Africa. Where indeed is the Mississippi panorama
and the girl that played the piano and
kept her hand on her heart
as Flanagan drank a quart of moonshine
before the eyes of the town's gentlemen?
What happened to your locomotive in Winter, Walt,
and my ride across the prairies in the trail
of the stage-coach, the gold-rush and the Swanee River?
Where did they bury Geronimo,
heroic chieftain, lonely horseman of this apocalypse
who led his tribesmen across deserts of cholla
and emerald hills
in pursuit of despoilers,
half-starved immigrants
from a despoiled Europe?
What happened to Archibald's
soul's harvest on this raw earth
of raw hates?
To those that have none
a festival is preparing at graves' ends
where the mockingbird's hymn
closes evening of prayers
and supplication as
new winds blow from graves
flowered in multi-colored cemeteries even
where they say the races are intact.
...

1.

the flat end of sorrow here
two crows fighting over New Year's Party
leftovers. From my cell, I see a cold
hard world.


2.

So this is the abscess that
hurts the nation—
jails, torture, blood
and hunger.
One day it will burst;
it must burst.


3.

When I heard you were taken
we speculated, those of us at large
where you would be
in what nightmare will you star?
That night I heard the moans
wondering whose child could now
be lost in the cellars of oppression.
Then you emerged, tall, and bloody-eyed.

It was the first time
I wept.


4.

The long nights I dread most
the voices from behind the bars
the early glow of dawn before
the guard's steps wake me up,
the desire to leap and stretch
and yawn in anticipation
of another dark home-coming day
only to find that
I cannot.
riding the car into town,
hemmed in between them
their guns poking me in the ribs,
I never had known that my people
wore such sad faces, so sad
they were, on New Year's Eve,
so very sad.
...

In the east, the day breaks; do not
say we have started too early;
For we shall cross many hills yet
Before we grow old; here
the land is surpassing in beauty.

Mao Tse Tung 1934
I look out the bars upon the Castle
the crust caked row of age
in a corner my friendly spider
crouches for the unwary gnats
of my days.

So much there is we must atone.
There are spires of faith
in the invisible claws of spiders
in the flight and curve of gulls.
These know, I swear,
the contours of the rolling Saharas
and the destitute oceans of our history.
We sit, debating the charity of our captors.

At night lights come on
the shoreline bends into a broad bay
near the Castle
the sea is gray
Yesterday it rained on the eve
of my forty-first year
and left all my defeats intact

Let me lead you into the country
It is only as half clansman
of the ritual goat
that I bring my song to the place of sacrifice
here in the pain fields
asphalt and smoke of a large hearth
I lead
my rope is short.
I shall soon arrive under the tree.

I will stage a hundred fights in honor of our Gods
and our beloved leader
Here, I could care less for the toiling masses
I retreated here before Lent
to my own stretch of sea front
(I cannot see the damned sea
because of old caked walls
built by Dutchmen)
But the shore falls into a deep gulf
there are no cliffs.

They found a week-old baby
buried in a shallow grave
on the front lawn of the fort.
I want my grave to be deeper.

They are sawing through our firewood
Today is cassava day
The flutist is silent
Perhaps his troops have arrived in Georgia

Not to arrive upsets me
And for the path that I have trod
I have no regrets
...

Had death not had me in tears
I would have seen the barges
on life's stream sail.
I would have heard sorrow songs
in groves where the road was lost
long
where men foot prints mix with other men foot prints
By the road I wait
'death is better, death is better'
came the song
I am by the roadside
looking for the road
death is better, death is much better
Had death not had me in tears
I would have seen the barges
I would have found the road
and heard the sorrow songs.
The land wreathes in rhythm
with your soul, caressed by history
and cruel geography
landscape ineffable yet screaming
eloquent resonant like the drums
of after harvests.
We pile rocks on terracing love
Carry the pithy cloth
to cover the hearths of our mother.

Come now, you lucky ones
come to the festival of corn and lamb
to the finest feast of this land
come, now,
your lovers have unfurled
their cloths
their thighs glistening like golden knives
ready for the plunging,
for the plentiful loving time.
To whom shall I turn
to what shall I tell my woes ?
My kinsmen, the desert tree
denied us sustenance
long before the drought.
To whom shall I turn
to whom shall I tell my woes?
Some say tell the mother goat
she too is my kinswoman
elemental sister of your clan
But I cannot tell the mother goat
for she is not here.
...

For Chris Okigbo, the well-known poet, killed in 1967 in the Nigerian civil war.
That night he came home, he came unto me
at the cold hour of the night
Smelling of corn wine in the dawn dew.
He stretched his hand and covered my forehead.
There was a moon beam sparking rays in particles.
The drummer boys had got themselves a goat.
The din was high in the wail of the harvest moon.
The flood was up gurgling through the fields
Birth waters swimming in floods of new blood.
He whispered my name in far echo
Sky-wailing into a million sounds
across my shores. His voice still bore
the sadness of the wanderer
To wail and die in a soft lonely echo
That echo I heard long ago
In the fall of night over my river,
In the distant rustle of reeds
At growth in the strength of my river.
Once upon an evening I heard it
Strung clear as the gong of the drummer boys
Bright burnished like the glint edge of
the paschal knife, ready anxious to cut
My cords and enter into my fields.
I was still a dream then
Carried by the flimsy whiffs
Of sweet scents borne aloft on the vision
Of my coming flood
That will bear me slowly and gently
Into his world of smiles and smells.
He was not very gentle with me
But I did not complain. The thrust
was hard and angry, severing the tiny cord
Shattering the closed gates of raffia
Gathering at its eye the reeds to feed my fishes.
My flood had not risen.

The canoe carried on the strength
Of his man rowed steep down my river
into a tumultuous eternity
Of green hills and mountains
That reeled and rolled to the river shore
To clasp and bear me away.

Then the floodgates opened
for justice to cleanse to purify
My evening of awakening
In the turbulence of his triumph
Into the bright evening of my rebirth.
The birth was tedious
The pangs were bitter
Into the bright evening I rushed
Crying I have found him I have found him.
He stood there rustling in the wind
The desire to go was written large upon his forehead.
I was not ready for his coming
I was not ready for his loneliness,
for his sad solitude against the rustling wind.
I was not ready for his entrance
Into my fields and shores of my river.
The entrance of raffia was closed
closed against his lonely solitude.

He stood beneath my entrance
In his approach I knew the steps he took
Like the departing Lazarus
Marching toward his grave.
I was not ready.
The flood was gurgling at his estuary
swimming within me birth waters
warmed by his coming. He was silent
mute against the rushing of the wind
to cry and die for his homeland.
My flood had not risen then.
Across my vastness he marched into the wind
his arms folded upon his chest,
his eyes searching for the gates
that will open his amulets
to snatch and wear his talisman of hope.
He marched into the wind
howling through door posts
to catch the boatman at the dawn point.
to ferry him across my river.
But I was not ready.

My hands stretched to cover his
in the darkness, to cover his eyes
in the agony of his solitude
to call him names I knew
to put the dressing from my womb
upon his cudgel scars,
to hold his hand in the clasp of nightfall.
He was mute; the wind had stopped rustling
He was erect like the totem pole of his household
He burned and blazed for an ending
Then I was ready. As he pierced my agony
with his cry, my river burst into flood.
My shores reeled and rolled
to the world's end, where they say
at the world's end the graves are green.
...

A calm settles
at the beckon of sweet age…
Joy and hope soar
for the ultimate task
ahead written about, already
promised in the trajectories of jail,
in absence and exile…
That we will perform our duty by the people
depose the recalcitrant brutes
and march ahead of our beloved masses
to a coming kingdom…
Let the dream not die, master;
Let the dove coo at dawn again,
Let the masthead rear its head
out of the storm
and share the night with me on this sea.
Let me sing the song you gave me.
Before death comes, master,
Let me dance to the drums you gave me.
Let me sit in the warmth of the fire
Of the only native land you gave me.
...

.... Go and tell them I paid the price
I stood by the truth
I fought anger and hatred
on behalf of the people.
I ate their meagre meals in the barracks
shared their footsteps and tears
in freedom's name
I promised once in a slave house in Ussher
to postpone dying until
the morning after freedom.
I promise.
...

I.
Dzogbese Lisa has treated me thus
It has led me among the sharps of the forest
Returning is not possible
And going forward is a great difficulty
The affairs of this world are like the chameleon faeces
Into which I have stepped
When I clean it cannot go.
I am on the world's extreme corner,
I am not sitting in the row with the eminent
But those who are lucky
Sit in the middle and forget
I am on the world's extreme corner
I can only go beyond and forget.
My people, I have been somewhere
If I turn here, the rain beats me
If I turn there the sun burns me
The firewood of this world
Is for only those who can take heart
That is why not all can gather it.
The world is not good for anybody
But you are so happy with your fate;
Alas! The travelers are back
All covered with debt.
II.
Something has happened to me
The things so great that I cannot weep;
I have no sons to fire the gun when I die
And no daughters to wail when I close my mouth
I have wandered on the wilderness
The great wilderness men call life
The rain has beaten me,
And the sharp stumps cut as keen as knives
I shall go beyond and rest.
I have no kin and no brother,
Death has made war upon our house;
And Kpeti's great household is no more,
Only the broken fence stands;
And those who dared not look us in his face
Have come out as men.
How well their pride is with them.
Let those gone before take note
They have treated their offspring badly.
What is the wailing for?
Somebody is dead. Agosu himself
Alas! A snake has bitten me
My right arm is broken,
And the tree on which I lean is fallen.
Agosi if you go tell them,
Tell Nyidevu, Kpeti, and Kove
That they have done us evil;
Tell them their house is falling
And the trees in the fence
Have been eaten by termites;
That the martels curse them.
Ask them why they idle there
While we suffer, and eat sand.
And the crow and the vulture
Hover always above our broken fences
And strangers walk over our portion.
...