Kofi Awoonor, one of Ghana’s most accomplished poets, had for almost half a century committed himself to teaching, political engagement, and the literary arts. The one constant that guided and shaped his many occupations and roles in life was poetry. The Promise of Hope is a beautifully edited collection of some of Awoonor’s most arresting work spanning almost fifty years.
Selected and edited by Awoonor’s friend and colleague Kofi Anyidoho, himself a prominent poet and academic in Ghana, The Promise of Hope contains much of Awoonor’s most recent unpublished poetry, along with many of his anthologized and classic poems. This engaging volume serves as a fitting contribution to the inaugural cohort of books in the African Poetry Book Series.
Kofi Awoonor, one of Ghana’s most accomplished poets, had for almost half a century committed himself to teaching, political engagement, and the literary arts. The one constant that guided and shaped his many occupations and roles in life was poetry. The Promise of Hope is a beautifully edited collection of some of Awoonor’s most arresting work spanning almost fifty years.
Selected and edited by Awoonor’s friend and colleague Kofi Anyidoho, himself a prominent poet and academic in Ghana, The Promise of Hope contains much of Awoonor’s most recent unpublished poetry, along with many of his anthologized and classic poems. This engaging volume serves as a fitting contribution to the inaugural cohort of books in the African Poetry Book Series.
The Promise of Hope: New and Selected Poems, 1964-2013
336
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Overview
Kofi Awoonor, one of Ghana’s most accomplished poets, had for almost half a century committed himself to teaching, political engagement, and the literary arts. The one constant that guided and shaped his many occupations and roles in life was poetry. The Promise of Hope is a beautifully edited collection of some of Awoonor’s most arresting work spanning almost fifty years.
Selected and edited by Awoonor’s friend and colleague Kofi Anyidoho, himself a prominent poet and academic in Ghana, The Promise of Hope contains much of Awoonor’s most recent unpublished poetry, along with many of his anthologized and classic poems. This engaging volume serves as a fitting contribution to the inaugural cohort of books in the African Poetry Book Series.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780803249899 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | UNP - Nebraska Paperback |
| Publication date: | 03/01/2014 |
| Series: | African Poetry Book |
| Pages: | 336 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.90(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.30(d) |
About the Author
Kofi Awoonor (1935–2013) was a diplomat and a professor of comparative literature at numerous universities, including the University of Ghana. He is the author of several volumes of poetry, including Night of My Blood; Ride Me, Memory; The House by the Sea; and The Latin American and Caribbean Notebook. His collected poems (through 1985) were published in Until the Morning After. Kofi Anyidoho, a poet and scholar, serves on editorial boards for several journals and has been a guest editor of Matatu, a journal of African culture and society that is published in Amsterdam.
Read an Excerpt
The Promise of Hope
New and Selected Poems, 1964â?"2013
By Kofi Awoonor, Kofi Anyidoho
UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA PRESS
Copyright © 2014 Board of Regents of the University of NebraskaAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8032-5494-7
CHAPTER 1
From Herding the Lost Lambs
2013
Poems in English and Ewe
The Light Is On
A gray pigeon has just flown in
across the green country
where loafers chase a speck of white
How I used to
adore the summers
the windswept landscape
the open fields
and the lush foreboding country
Ah I almost forgot the water
wide wide as the vistas
of youth, the wish to curb a
foreboding future full of formidable
prospects receding now so fast
Each gnat is part of this inexorable
universe, this inevitable landscape
with its own inimitable echoes.
Our journey, supported by time and wind
captive of a May morning
away from the original March heat
when the shimmers over the water
glimmer so fiercely.
There are times when a new sorrow rings
when regrets, palpable as obvious fruits
of ill-considered acts
without hidden agenda
loom large as fate
Dear dear sorrow
rings, reminding, just reminding
of a time ahead, not for reckoning
but only for recalling as fate.
the time we as young as
our country
dreamed of obvious success,
of achievements measured
in concise yardage
of promises delivered,
of children protected from age,
the time
when the river from which we came
shall sweep us along
toward the original source
of eminence and glory,
when we will defy love
and death,
when we shall stand
by the beloved country as the single tree
struggling to be a nation
and a forest
benevolent fathers,
when we forget the loins from which we came
nudge us back into the river,
send us up the same water
by which we came
so with the last fish
we can cross the last ocean
to be one with the fire that
warmed your feet
guided you over deserts
by pyramids and temples
shrines and sacred groves,
on that island
where once the bird
was plentiful and the hunt
was good, and the cheer
was loud and the laughter joyful
and ah! the child Kekeli
came one October day
large-eyed, replica of the first
princess, and now the prince
has come promised
someday, by some river
I shall teach him the
last light and reveal
the divine affair
of which he is part
of which he is an heir.
here is water for your feet
here is flower for your feet
here is wine for your lips
here is the embrace I promised.
The New Boy on the Block
He came one October night
screaming blue murder
out of a swearing mother
whose enormous pain
disarms, hurts
mystifies
Away from the antiseptic smells
and the silent steps of the attendants
waddling across a vast eternity
of a delivery hall
I waited for your arrival.
A small music flows
across time
reminding of another birth
at another place
I swear that I shall stand by you
that I shall prepare the field
for your planting time
provide the seed
for your sowing dawn.
I shall raise my tomb
a full memorial for your
wondrous future
so that wherever I fall
you shall rise up.
At an age
when many rock themselves
into an easy chair
I chose to father children
and to hell with who disagrees
including the lobby against birth
run by eunuchs and fools.
Welcome, boy, you have come
to sweeten the falling years
when leisure is less than planned
and romance blooms in the eyes
of a lovely woman.
Hurrah for fatherhood.
Fair souls that canter
across a golden era
of crowns and gravestones
delicious hours of long lost
love and the brevity of faith
in the infinite certainty
that God exists
and loves all His children
without exception
assures us
I dreamt again that dream
of childhood,
this time I left the homestead
walked across a small dune
cactus filled a row
erect, arrogant beyond belief
and the claim they
are the remnants of divine action
which fools ascribe to the first man
The fear of the grave
is real
I still shudder
passing by cemeteries
particularly those planted
with the curative nim
and the forget-me-not
winds howling by
among stones shabbily laid
by masons whose sense
of size and measure
confound the sharpest eye.
Builder, king, queen
Sun-god and priest
Of my temple
Good Lord, Whatever
the price let me pay
it in the full knowledge
that your mercy rests
secure, and You and Your host of
deities shall be with your son
and your people.
Across a New Dawn
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 color 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
Songs of Abuse
I once swore to forgo
the abuse songs, the dirge
and the praise poem for
straight verbal statements
direct comment and simple talk
as fresh as the child's language
before comprehension
But I have enough provocation
to renounce my oath
and return to cursing the night
the falling light
and the inglorious criminals
whose ancestry stretches to
the fornicating hard-arsed baboon
and the smelly hyena
who laughs as he feeds
on the corpse of his grand-aunt
I know you all, you
products of thieving jackals,
stepsons of frauds
who rechristen themselves
donkeys believing it is
a higher-sounding nomenclature
I know you all, you lascivious brutes
I know one in particular
his mother an aging whore
his putative father
a lunatic criminal
with a record of political molestation.
And the congregation of contumacious rats
who in concert with products
of unions between calculating whores
and a race of swamp goats
now perched on a pedestal of power
visiting on the beloved republic
the shame of their mediocrity
I will spew out the venom of years
expurgate the hurts of one generation
so that I retain my sanity.
I love the after-harvest fields
when the wild hen roams
I denounce your arrogance
your false claims to virtue
and your monkey ways
I challenge you to prove
you were not fathered
by a barnyard sheep
and an errant baboon
who it is established
was raving mad.
That you found money somewhere
to print a newspaper
is not a mystery
every fool with a fool's tale
can coax money from other fools
for ignoble purpose
But the fact remains
that your mother is still a whore,
your father, well
some said he took a Bible
into hell, babbling obscenities,
the simple fact is
he was a certified lunatic,
part of the destructive howling winds
that rocked the sanity of men.
how expertly you mimick him
To Feed Our People
Do not dress me yet
lift me not
unto that mound before the mourners.
I have still to meet the morning dew
a poem to write
a field to hoe
a lover to touch
and some consoling to do
before you lay me out.
Has the invitation come yet
from India?
I have to go
and meet the sunset
share time
with the Florida pigeons on that Island,
I have to meet again my friends in Agra
where they owe me
for pictures and a memory.
Why are we not calving the cows
or herding the lost lambs home ourselves?
Why must we think
others will lead our horses
herd our sheep
and feed our people?
We must bring in our harvest
father the children
and thatch the barns.
We must build the roads
clear the paths to the planting fields
and clean the holy places;
and oh, we must meet the
morning dew wet,
work with the early sun till the vertex
when it will come home with us.
Then after the wash, then only
shall we bring out the drums
recall old glories
and ancient pains
with the dance our dance.
When the final night falls on us
as it fell upon our parents,
we shall retire to our modest home
earth-sure, secure
that we have done our duty
by our people;
we met the challenge of history
and were not afraid.
To the Ancient Poets
They said they found a strange
woman at my door
one deep night
A messenger indeed from the gods?
The gone befores,
I call you again,
I call you, Akpalu akpa, gogowoduto
Bibia bi wofoe na woviwo
I recall our last encounter
by the lagoon shore on a breezy cloudy day
when the rusty roofs of Keta
had disappeared in the mist;
gulls, in an early gambol
across our lagoon
recall the shrieks
heard since time
coinciding with your voice
proclaiming "I shall go
beyond and forget"
your songs were the sons
you bore; you sang;
the rain beat you
the sun scorched you
the firewood of this world
is not for all
that is why you did not
gather it.
Dzenawo, nyonu gbade
a woman of high worth
you sang the dirge of wealth
and death
the eternal stalker
who plucks the young
and leaves the old
refuses gold
and insists on man,
who harvests the fields
he did not plant
who locks the door
and hides the key
and all of you,
those gone ahead
into the long night of life
My ancient friends Dunyo,
mesea gbagba o,
Komi Ekpe
who said his deity
is stuck in a brass pan.
You stood by your gods
and went home a holy man.
All of you;
take a message to our fathers
to Nyidevu, medaa ke vu o
to Afedomeshie
the black beauty of the ancient
Vuyokpo, you who left recently;
what did I do wrong
for you to leave in my absence?
Why didn't you wait for me
to bring the eye drops
you ordered
and deliver the iron bed
you asked for?
Why?
But you were only an errand woman
sent to the old ones
to deliver our long-spoken message
Gbe Kuetrome, I recall you now
how swiftly you left
I recall our rich sessions
when you spoke of Kofi Wodi
and his traveling friend.
Welcome, this is where we are
at home with the termites
the hour will surely come
so let us be ready.
Counting the Years
As usual, as in the earlier dreams
I come to the whistling shores
the voice of the high domed
crab stilled
but a chorus remains of the water creatures
of earlier times, of the birth time
and the dying time, the pity,
when we resurrect the travelers
the anchorman on our singular boat
that will take us home
Once More
I came again to the whistling shore
the wind lashing the gray trees of the after-rains
across my usual bay
where I ran a race as a boy
the thorn bush wept for the squirrels
bereft of nuts in a season
when the palms refused to ripen
and the wine turned a thin sap
unequal to the task
how weary I am
of the need to do good
cheer the weepy
and comfort the sorrower:
what more strength can I summon
for this miraculous effort
at mercy?
An ailing tree
reminds us of a journey
to a far-off kingdom
of the man, unalone
who hanged they say
for all
I believe still in the unity of man
in the sun rising tomorrow
in the rain to grow our crops
in the gods and the ancestors
in infinite grace and mercy
and the ever-presence
of the Divine force
who gives to all HIS/HER children
without fail
without discrimination
On the Gallows Once
I crossed quite a few
of your rivers, my gods,
into this plain where thirst reigns
I heard the cry of mourners
the long cooing of the African wren at dusk
the laughter of the children at dawn
had long ceased
night comes fast in our land
where indeed are the promised vistas
the open fields, blue skies, the singing birds
and abiding love?
History records acts
of heroism, barbarism
of some who had power
and abused it massively
of some whose progenitors
planned for them
the secure state of madness
from which no storm can shake them;
of some who took the last ships
disembarked on some far-off shores and forgot
of some who simply laid down the load
and went home to the ancestors
Truth
I watch the countenance
of this man, looking for the tell-tale
signs of truth, honor, fortitude
and a faint whiff of gratitude
only a wry smile
eyes on the verge of blazing
a terrible effort to dissemble
alas dear gods, he gets away
with it
What Brought Me Here?
What brought me here
is more than the desire
to share a common fate
partake in the work and promise
of man and country
What brought me here
is the determination to heal
the thorn-wounds
of those with eternal miseries
and the burden of night-time cries,
of orphans without meals
of lepers without fingers
of holy men without faith
Dear God, what consolation
have you stored for us
after these fretful days
in the service of ingrates and wickedness?
How much pain shall we endure
as our hope burns in chains
beside the hanging tree?
O how little
is our faith
in an eternal deity
who lashes our souls
with sin and the promise
of redemption
I caught history's eye
the other day.
I saw the anguish in his eyes,
as I watched his life-lines ebb away
I smelt the fear on his fetid breath
as time wound itself
in the final sheets of an ending.
I remember not the hour
of regrets, pain, and sorrow
but the time when I
was young as the new moon and nation
on a clear June evening;
wrens and the cuckoo dove,
the one that keeps the hour
on our savannas
sang a jubilee
"all that is not given is not lost"
why must thanklessness
cover the tail of work done,
commitment so ably made?
my friend the Methodist
in answer to my query
proclaimed,
"God is His own interpreter
and He will make it plain"
What More Can I Give?
"if they do not heed my call
I will walk alone"
A lifetime used in service
at times at the behest of saints
and heroes, at times, only at times
at the behest of not so good men
and women
So much does my infant's cry mean
so much, my friends.
Returning once along my favorite road
homeward, beneath a crazy bridge
occupied by bats
hearing a siren crying
a fellow to the sick house
I thought I needed a pee.
The fact of our lives,
full of achievements
vilification, praise
or contempt from those
who surely do not measure
eternity becomes a quotation
posted on the billboard of a single life.
Passions are exhausted
love, renewed again
and again
to satisfy a basic longing,
journeys made, departures recorded
deaths foretold again
and again
I have the fear that I am not done
that my gnat days will be long
tedious and melancholy
the premonition that not much
will come from the vigil and the sweat
and the tears and the long hours
and the sacrifice
That I come from illustrious men
and women is an obvious fact
but also that in this gene
I harbor not so good
men and women, persons
of questionable morality and obvious flaws
is no matter
I did not know it will return
this crushing urge to sing
only sorrow songs;
the urge to visit again
the last recesses of pain
pluck that lingering hair with a wince.
how long shall my God
linger in a brass pan
the offertory unreceived?
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Promise of Hope by Kofi Awoonor, Kofi Anyidoho. Copyright © 2014 Board of Regents of the University of Nebraska. Excerpted by permission of UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA PRESS.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents
Foreword Kwame Dawes xiii
Acknowledgments xv
In Retrospect: An Introduction Kofi Anyidoho xvii
From Herding the Lost Lambs (2013)
The Light Is On 3
The New Boy on the Block 6
Across a New Dawn 8
Songs of Abuse 11
To Feed Our People 13
To the Ancient Poets 15
Counting the Years 18
Once More 18
On the Gallows Once 19
Truth 20
What Brought Me Here? 21
What More Can I Give? 22
Those Gone Ahead 24
Up in the Garden 28
Xiansi, Pou Tou Dalla 29
I'll Raise a New Song 32
Remembrance 35
From Latin American & Caribbean Notebook (1992)
In Memoriam 41
Of Home and Sea I Already Sang 42
Of Home Once More 44
Rio de Janeiro: Fearful and Lovely City 45
Distant Home Country 49
Agra: January 21, 1989 51
Cuban Chapters 52
The Hero's Blood 53
Of Faith and Fortitude 54
The Orient Express 55
Betrayers 56
Havana, Cuba: The Free Territory of the Americas 60
A Caress 63
For Tenu and Afetsi: A Hymn 64
Of Niggerhood 69
A Death Foretold 70
The Prophecy from Iran 72
In Memoriam: Return to Kingston 73
Lover's Song 79
The Red Bright Book of History 79
At a Time Like This 81
Back with Sandino 84
Prayer 86
The Ancient Twine 88
Seatime, Another 89
Readings and Musings 91
Light Hours in Verse 92
Time Revisited 94
A Thin Echo of Time's Voice 94
"As Long As There Are Tears and Suffering, So Long Our Work Will Not Be Over," Jawaharlal Nehru" 97
The Girl that Died in Havana 97
Our Pride Alone 99
Dream-Again 101
New Rain 102
Birds on an Autumn Wire 103
Shamla Hills: Bhopal 105
Shamla Hills: Sanchi Temples 106
Childhood 108
Parting 109
From Until the Morning After (1987)
Life's Tears 113
So the World Changes 114
Life's Winds 115
Grains and Tears 116
Had Death Not Had Me in Tears 117
Act of Faith 118
I Rejoice 119
The Picture 120
For Ezeki 121
From The House by the Sea (1978)
tPart 1 Before the Journey
Poems, Fall '73 129
The Land Endures 130
Going Somehow 131
After the Exile and the Feasts 136
Some Talk of Lunar Virgins 138
Poem 139
Poetry 139
Departure and Prospect 140
When Going into Jail 143
Africa 143
Poem 144
Of Absence 144
Poem 146
Poem 147
Sequences 148
For Henoga Vinoko Akpalu 150
An American Poem 152
Another Lover's Song 155
Self-Portrait 156
Part 2 Homecoming… Poems from Prison
Homecoming 161
The Second Circle: Beginning Midnight, 5/1/76 162
On Being Told of Torture 163
The First Circle 164
Dream of Home 166
Revolution 166
To Sika on Her 11th Birthday 167
Revolution: A Chat with Ho Chi Minh's Ghost 168
Found Poem 172
Another Found Poem 174
The Place 176
Poem 176
Us 177
Love 177
Personal Note 178
Sea Time, Meaning a Pledge 179
The Will to Die 181
A Little Word 182
The Wayfarer Comes Home 184
From Ride Me, Memory (1973)
America 203
Harlem on a Winter Night 204
Long Island Sketches 204
To My Uncle Jonathan: A Song of Abuse 208
To Felicity, a Girl I Met in LA 209
Hymns of Praise, Celebration, and Prayer 210
Afro-American Beats 214
Etchings from My Mind 217
My Father's Prayer 219
My Uncle the Diviner-Chieftain 220
To Sika 221
To Those Gone Ahead 222
From Night of My Blood (1971)
I Heard a Bird Cry 227
Night of My Blood 239
Stop the Death-Cry 243
A Dirge 244
More Messages 245
At the Gates 247
The Dance 249
Do Not Handle It 250
All Men My Brothers 250
Lament of the Silent Sisters 251
Hymn To My Dumb Earth 254
They Do Not Sound for Me 268
From Rediscovery and Other Poems (1964)
My God of Songs Was Ill 271
The Sea Eats the Land at Home 272
The Cathedral 273
What Song Shall We Sing 273
We Have Found a New Land 274
The Anvil and the Hammer 274
Rediscovery 275
The Weaver Bird 276
The Purification 276
The Gone Locusts 277
Songs of Sorrow 278
From This Earth, My Brother: An Allegorical Tale of Africa (1971)
The Making of the New Nation (Chapter 2a) 283
From Comes the Voyager at Last: A Tale of Return to Africa (1992)
Festival of Oneness 289
An Epilogue by Kofi Awoonor 293
Source Acknowledgments 297