I will not mourn you, young, melodious maestro,
when we were not ready to surrender your voice
to the pathogens of death; not when your life,
a thrilling melody was still an acceptable, vibrant force,
growing like a fern in our desert of thorns!
The young die suddenly, their beards not yet grey;
but death is no more a respecter of time and age,
and the old have no tears left to mourn them,
because their hearts, my brother, are stony graves!
But I will not mourn you when your verses live!
In the radiance of day, you were strong like a mighty baobab;
and ancient rivers flowed through your veins. Your voice
was a sweet baritone that boomed with the orchestration
of magisterial verse: those lines that warmed our hearts,
and gave us hope that, in your hands and heavenly gifts,
-not to mention your Byronic limp and flair-
the soul of poetry had found a maestro blessed by the Gods.
Then, the same inscrutable deities rendered your heart
victim of the vampires of smuggled blood.
Magical rhythm of life, your platelets came undone,
and left you gasping for life in the pathways of the Gods,
where you first heard the ancestral trumpets,
urging you to write truth in a land where rivulets
of lies and acrimonious sermons fatten our greedy lips
Esteemed poet, the story goes you were owed
a golden pension earned from service to the nation,
for which your life demanded an airlift to Ghana,
or some other land where they do not allow poets to die!
But these are the bitter times when tribal lunacy
is the golden chariot in which crocodiles,
already fattened on the sweets of the river dead, ride
in glee, and bare their Saracen teeth!
These are the bitter times when the lucent green
of the mountain has given way to the darkness of fear!
The cemeteries sing of the numberless dead.
In the silence of the night, their graves are raided for golden teeth,
while the cracks and crevices in our dark, water-less homes
are veined more deeply than Saharan tracks,
as torrents of rain turn our cities into quagmires,
so well written about by poets, angry as the rain!
Bring back the un-tribal harmony of Sir Milton,
Wallace- Johnson and John Karefa-Smart.
Strike the Kora, and let the gong of the Matoma
and the fanfare of the Gorboy join me
as I dance behind the awesome portrait of the Gelede.
I want to remember those times when Red and Green
did not meet at the crossroads of war and death.
For too long, abysmal and wanton fantasies have
blighted our lives and made nonsense of ONE nation.
Bring back the living dead from the torments of their grave,
and pour into their lips an amphora of sweet wine!
Until then, I will not mourn you, Maestro, of this labyrinth
of hope and beautiful songs whose legacy will never die!
- Syl Cheney-Coker
Copyright © 2022 Politico Online (12/10/22)
