Elegy To Kofi Awoonoor Poem by Oliver .........

Words are minimal and distraught;
Famished or gaunt, a throat
Is in narrow conduit of thirst
As latest duration of sun ends
In ripples, breath and moans.

Successor to soil sweats,
occupants of air scream and sing
As month-ridden valleys blether
To a charm under the great almond
Tree on the border of eternal water,

So you're away with your absence,
Bitterness and darkness! Kenya
The great black has taken you out,
You'd not tread back on poetry
You'd not come back to laughter
And talk! I think you are
In the folds of stretching distance
Of the embroiled sand beyond Sahara!

In one night or day, O Africa,
I too would join the band wagon
Of Angels, choristers and prophets.
Then you'd boil my blood anew,
Perhaps you'd take me around,
What you had seen in that sombre
Noon! Let me cry or smile now,
Touch your drowned product of words,
Open the eyes of the rain that often

Fails mankind, lonely inheritors of grief,
And you, the great who lies in depths of memories!