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.