Nelson Ngombe, Fail Poem by Richard George

In winter '63,
snowed in, my father kept the house
warm by marking GCEs
from the golden coast of Ghana.
The academic High Priest
and Prempe these boys supplicated,
terror-eyed, was twenty-eight
with a young family.

There were no Desmond Tutus here.
Paper after paper barely
one side, scratch-and-scrawled.
He imagined a lad going back to
his village, and his mother asking
'Did you do your best, son? '
'Yes, I did my best'.
And they had. That was the tragedy.

He gave nobody zero.
(Not all were so kind) . They got
2%, for writing their name.
Patronizing? Perhaps.
But he couldn't bear to tell them
'You are worth nothing'.
The saddest script was simply
'Please, sir.
I have read the paper.
I feel ill'.
A causal link - or malaria?
Either way, hope smashed
on the rich loam, soaking in.