Kofi Awoonor Poems

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.
...

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.
...

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

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.
...

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

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

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.
...