A-ARTs: Tribute: Of Kofi Awoonor and his poetic thoughts

Kofi Awoonor (1935–2013)

Here is one of the poet’s works.

This Earth, My Brother

The dawn crack of sounds known

rending our air

shattering our temples toppling

raising earthwards our cathedrals of hope,

in demand of lives offered on those altars

for the cleansing that was done long ago.

Within the airwaves we carry

our hutted entrails; and we pray;

shrieks abandoned by lonely road-sides

as the gunmen’s boots tramp.

I lift up the chalice of hyssop and tears

to touch the lips of the thirsty

sky-wailing in a million spires

of hate and death; we pray

bearing the single hope to shine

burnishing in the destiny of my race

that glinting sword of salvation.

In time my orchestra plays my music

from potted herbs of anemone and nim

pour upon the festering wounds of my race,

to wash forever my absorbent radiance

as we search our granary for new corn.

There was that miracle we hoped for

that salvation we longed for

for which we said many prayers

offered many offerings.

In the seasons of burning feet

of bad harvest and disastrous marriages

there burns upon the glint edge of that sword

the replica of the paschal knife.

The sounds rounded our lonely skies

among the nims the dancers gather their cloths

stretching their new-shorn hides off offered cows

to build themselves new drums.

Sky-wailing from afar the distant tramp

of those feet in rhythm

miming underneath them violence.

Along the roads lined with mimosas

the mangled and manacled are dragged

to the cheers of us all.

We strew flowers at the feet of the conquerors

beg for remission of our sins…

…He will come out of the grave

His clothes thrown around him;

worms shall not have done their work.

His face shall beam the radiance of many suns.

His gait the bearing of a victor,

On his forehead shall shine a thousand stars

he will kneel after the revelation

and die on this same earth.

And I pray

That my hills shall be exalted

And he who washes me,

breathes me

shall die.

They led them across the vastness

As they walked they tottered

and rose again. They walked

across the grassland to the edge of the mound

and knelt down in silent prayer;

they rose again led to the mound,

they crouched

like worshippers of Muhammed.

Suddenly they rose again

stretching their hands to the crowd

in wasteful gestures of identity

Boos and shrieks greeted them

as they smiled and waved

as those on a big boat journey.

A sudden silence fell

as the crowd pushed and yelled

into the bright sharp morning of a shooting.

They led them unto the mound

In a game of blindman’s bluff

they tottered to lean on the sandbags

Their backs to the ocean

that will bear them away.

The crackling report of brens

and the falling down;

a shout greeted them

tossing them into the darkness.

and my mountains reel and roll

to the world’s end.

c/o www.goafricafund.com

Kofi Awoonor (1935–2013)

Awoonor is author of novels such as This Earth, My Brother… (1971) and Comes the Voyager at Last: A Tale of Return to Africa (1992). He died in the Westgate shopping mall attack in Kenya in September 2013.

Awoonor was born George Awoonor-Williams in Wheta, Ghana, to Ewe parents. He was a poet, literary critic, professor of comparative literature and served as an ambassador for Ghana.

Awoonor earned a BA from University College of Ghana, an MA from University College, London, and a PhD in comparative literature from SUNY Stony Brook. He is the author of novels, plays, political essays, literary criticism, and several volumes of poetry, including Rediscovery and Other Poems (1964); Night of My Blood (1971); Ride Me, Memory (1973); The House by the Sea (1978); The Latin American and Caribbean Notebook (1992); and a volume of collected poems, Until the Morning After (1987).  

Awoonor’s grandmother was an Ewe dirge singer, and the form of his early poetry draws from the Ewe oral tradition. He translated Ewe poetry in his critical study Guardians of the Sacred Word and Ewe Poetry (1974).

Other works of literary criticism include The Breast of the Earth: A Survey of the History, Culture, and Literature of Africa South of the Sahara (1975).  

In the early 1970s, Awoonor served as chairman of the Department of Comparative Literature at SUNY Stony Book. He returned to Ghana in 1975 to teach at University College of Cape Coast. In Ghana, he was arrested and tried for suspected involvement in a coup. He was imprisoned without trial and was later released; he wrote about his time in jail in The House by the Sea. Awoonor resumed teaching after his sentence was remitted. In the 1980s, he was the Ghanaian ambassador to Brazil and Cuba and served as ambassador to the United Nations from 1990 to 1994; in 1990 he published Ghana: A Political History from Pre-European to Modern Times.

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