Whisperings

         Of time squandered

         Opportunities not grasped

         Of the indifference of friends

         The betrayal of family

         Love gone awry. 

         From the edge of things comes whispering too

         Crushing humiliation

         Nurturing new seeds of time

         Of new comrades

         Indifferent to pettiness

`       Carrying the hope of a people yet to be

         Singing a new beatitude

         Of the resurrection of all people wherever forever.

                    Composed in Cape Coast, November 8, 2020

 

 2.     Out here the flora scent is overpowering,

        All opposition becalmed

        By beauty so complete,

        So sweet.

        As the dark clouds gallop by at dawn

        And the sun unfolds in her grandeur

        So your presence dispels doubts

        And instills certainty

        That this too is forever. 

 

        For in you I see a rhythm of time

        Indifferent to woes that so easily eclipse hope.

        In you I see a cadence of sensuous glow

        That bespeaks of calm assurance

        That calls forth a new algorithm of hope—

 

        Our progeny indifferent to tribe

        That base instinct of the herd

        Indifferent to Religion

        Sanctuary for duplicity;

        Indifferent to Temples

        Epitomes of conceit.

        Only the pure heart

        shall Proclaims

        Love

        Hope

        Redemption. 

            Cape Coast, Nov 8, 2020

 

 

And yet this too was a place of hope.

It may yet be again!

From such embers the sphinx resurrection finds,

Again and again.

What dreams and hopes vanquished?

What civil and uncivil thoughts and plans?

What memories, sweet and sour?

Interrupted, sacrificed, silenced here too?

And all for this?

 

And yet in this place too

Being was being

Carnival and cogito caroused

Proverb wrestled with Anansesem

Anansesem became Anansegro

Dwarf met his match in Man

Anokye dared the heavens

Donkor despaired for another time

And sweet love consummated.

 

The harmattan wailed at night 

Of coming woe.

Of Samori and Babatu,

Of the wily Kanbong.

Yet we were deaf

Again and again

Forgetful that

A river that fails to flow

Never participates in the vastness of the ocean.

 

The baobab alone has lived to tell

Of the hillock of bodies

That accuse memory

Of battering our future

For an incoherent present.

 

Is it madness to dream of resurrection

Here too?

Not of the dead but the undead,

The yet to be

The beginning of the future.

 

Against all odds

It will yet be again

From this embers

Will resurrection inaugurate

A people

Clamoring

That all may be One.