The African Poetry Book Fund is set to publish Awoonor’s latest collection, “Promises of Hope: New and Selected Poems” in 2014. Here, by permission of the publisher, is one of Awoonor’s final poems. Across A New Dawn By Kofi Awoonor Sometimes, we read the lines in the green leaf run our fingers over the smooth of the precious wood from our ancient trees; Sometimes, even the sunset puzzles, as we look for the lines that propel the clouds, the colour scheme with the multiple designs that the first artist put together There is dancing in the streets again the laughter of children rings through the house On the seaside, the ruins recent from the latest storms remind of ancestral wealth pillaged purloined pawned by an unthinking grandfather who lived the life of a lord and drove coming generations to despair and ruin * But who says our time is up that the box maker and the digger are in conference or that the preachers have aired their robes and the choir and the drummers are in rehearsal? No; where the worm eats a grain grows. the consultant deities have measured the time with long winded arguments of eternity And death, when he comes to the door with his own inimitable calling card shall find a homestead resurrected with laughter and dance and the festival of the meat of the young lamb and the red porridge of the new corn * We are the celebrants whose fields were overrun by rogues and other bad men who interrupted our dance with obscene songs and bad gestures Someone said an ailing fish swam up our lagoon seeking a place to lay its load in consonance with the Original Plan Master, if you can be the oarsman for our boat please do it, do it. I asked you before once upon a shore at home, where the seafront has narrowed to the brief space of childhood We welcome the travelers come home on the new boat fresh from the upright tree
Posted on: Mon, 23 Sep 2013 15:31:34 +0000
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