1825: For Sika | Kofi Awoonor
"For Sika"
Kofi Awoonor
Remember the Christmas
when on our way from Chelsea
you fell on pavements
broke a tooth and I was mute?
Your mother thought I was cruel,
but your fall hurt me
in that all of us,
your clansmen, fell on alien ground
Remember the morning walks
to your nanny's
where you sulked and longed for home
the agony of flights and
the pain of separation looming
large like winter moons.
I knew I was the tempest
that will blast your youth
and misery of infancy.
Oh, I was the Abraham
sacrificing my Isaac
waiting in vain for the ram in the thicket
for dreams long forgotten under tropical suns.
But what could I have done?
Was I not aware of coming prophecies
certainties
the final estrangement
prepared in secrecy
by the intervening gods of my household?
No. I was not seeking
an athanasia; how can I
the epilogue of my own long torment
understand the prologue I dreamed you to be?
The author of this poem, Ghanian poet Kofi Awoonor, was killed in the recent terrorist attack in at the mall in Nairobi.
For decades, I wrote with Kofi's rules written on a faded yellow paper taped to my wall. First, "A poem is distilled from the poet's blood," he would say. If I did not feel deeply about what I was writing, no one else would. Second, "If you want to know your times, read the poets." Writing without understanding and compassion is mere recording. And third, hardest of all, the rule that has kept me up countless nights struggling to meet a standard of such height that it is perhaps the only Cardinal Rule for writing I know. "If it can be cut, it must be." - from a tribute to Kofi Awoonor by Bart Davis
some were showered with blossom, others wore their blooms like brooches or medallions; even those who turned their backs or refused point-blank to accept such honors were decorated with buds, unseasonable fruits and rosettes the same as the others.
Kofi Awoonor
Remember the Christmas
when on our way from Chelsea
you fell on pavements
broke a tooth and I was mute?
Your mother thought I was cruel,
but your fall hurt me
in that all of us,
your clansmen, fell on alien ground
Remember the morning walks
to your nanny's
where you sulked and longed for home
the agony of flights and
the pain of separation looming
large like winter moons.
I knew I was the tempest
that will blast your youth
and misery of infancy.
Oh, I was the Abraham
sacrificing my Isaac
waiting in vain for the ram in the thicket
for dreams long forgotten under tropical suns.
But what could I have done?
Was I not aware of coming prophecies
certainties
the final estrangement
prepared in secrecy
by the intervening gods of my household?
No. I was not seeking
an athanasia; how can I
the epilogue of my own long torment
understand the prologue I dreamed you to be?
The author of this poem, Ghanian poet Kofi Awoonor, was killed in the recent terrorist attack in at the mall in Nairobi.
For decades, I wrote with Kofi's rules written on a faded yellow paper taped to my wall. First, "A poem is distilled from the poet's blood," he would say. If I did not feel deeply about what I was writing, no one else would. Second, "If you want to know your times, read the poets." Writing without understanding and compassion is mere recording. And third, hardest of all, the rule that has kept me up countless nights struggling to meet a standard of such height that it is perhaps the only Cardinal Rule for writing I know. "If it can be cut, it must be." - from a tribute to Kofi Awoonor by Bart Davis
some were showered with blossom, others wore their blooms like brooches or medallions; even those who turned their backs or refused point-blank to accept such honors were decorated with buds, unseasonable fruits and rosettes the same as the others.