To Fofo Ny3. (Ewe=to My Father) Poem by Elliot Moore Ahiator

Antho vi, Antho vi (vi =little)
Respond for your siblings call your name,
your friends and paramour of your boisterous youth call on you.
Respond! Where are you? They overexert their larynx.
From all the searching, their bended backs refuses to straighten.

Tee, oh Tee. She calls to you,
the Nubian earth upon which your stalwart seeds took root.
Whose bottom, you could never forswear no matter the
illicit others you perused, she calls in grief. Answer!
Da. Your progeny call.
we seek your counsel,

With my weary feet, I, at the crossroads, hands upon my brow,
gaze on an unknown path which will be known to all willy-nilly.
Could he have gone this way?
Impossible! He had not been called; it definitely was not his time.
Hah! On such a road return is never promised.
Awoonor told me thus, “Death has made war upon our house.”
Even now, he sucks upon our very marrow seated upon a throne of maggots.

My brow, moist as the banks of the Nile, drying up and wetting down
like the mood swings of a woman at moons end. The battle seems never-ending
and I tire, in constant fear of dreams unfulfilled.
My father is gone and I see the world for what it is;
A battle ground, with each his own king. Where the first sips of new wine touches your thirsting throat, then, atrociously ripped away. A man’s world!
I salute you! Even though, our eyes never saw through the same thread hole of a needle.
I have lost more than the tree on which my right hand leans.