1. THE LONELY SOUL – R.E.G.

ARMATTOE
I met an old woman
Talking by herself
Down a lonely road.
Talking to herself
Laughing all the time,
Talking to herself
Down a country road.
Child, you cannot know
Why folks talk alone.
If the road be long
And travelers none,
A man talks to himself
If showers of sorrows
Fall down like arrows
The lone wayfarer
May talk by himself.
So an old woman
On lone country roads
Laughing all the time
May babble to herself
To keep the tears away.
. Woman, you are sad!
‘Tis the same with me.

1. OUR GOD IS BLACK - R.E.G. ARMATTOE

Our God is black
Shout it through the forests,
From the hills to the woodlands.
Let the woodlands re-echo
Our God is black!
Black of eternal blackness,
With large voluptuous lips,
Matted hair and brown liquid eyes,
Figure of gainly form is He,
For in His image are we made.
Our God is black!
Blacker than star-shorn night,
Dark dusk and sunless dawn.
Proclaim to all the world,
Our God is black!
Behold the living God of Bronze,
Of stalwart frame and manly shape,

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 With arms of superhuman strength,
He standeth tallest man of men.
Are you too against us, oh God?
Behold us mocked by Malan
Maligned by malignant men,
In the land You gave Your own
Omnipotent and just God!
Oh tell us then where you stand.
Be silent, slaves,
Our God is black!

TAKE UM SO – GLADYS MAY CASELY HAYFORD

If God full some ouse wid pickin, en ‘E no gree full youn
Or ‘E gie you: don E take de pickin back;
Or ‘E show you road way tranga, en E put you for climb hill
En guide some oder person pan broad track-
Take um so.

NATIVITY - GLADYS MAY CASELY HAYFORD

Within a native hut, ere stirred the dawn,
Unto the Pure One was an Infant born,
Wrapped in blue lappah that His mother dyed,
Laid on His father’s home-tanned deerskin hide,
The Babe still slept, by all things glorified.
Spirits of black bards burst their bonds and sang
‘Peace upon earth’ until the heavens rang.
All the black babies who from earth had fled
Peeped through the clouds- then gathered round His head,
Telling of things a baby needs to do,
When first he opes his eyes on wonder new;
Telling him that sleep was sweetest rest,
All comfort came from His black mother’s breast.
Their gift was Love, caught from the springing sod,
Whilst tears and laughter were the gifts of God.
Then all the Wise Men of the past stood forth,
Filling the air, East, West, and South and North,
And told Him of the joy that wisdom brings.
To mortals in their earthly wanderings.
The children of the past shook down each bough,
Wreathed frangipani blossoms for His brow,

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They put pink lilies in His mother’s hand,
And heaped for both the first fruits of the land.
His father cut some palm fronds, that the air
Be coaxed zephyrs while He rested there.
Birds trilled their hallelujahs; all the dew
Trembled with laughter, till the Babe laughed too.
Black women brought their love so wise,
And kissed their motherhood into His mother’s eyes.

SONGS OF SORROW - KOFI AWOONOR

Dzogbese Lisa has treated me thus

It has led me among the sharps of the forest
Returning is not possible
And going forward is a great difficulty
The affairs of this world are like the chameleon faces
Into which I have stepped
When I clean it cannot go.

I am on the world’s extreme corner,

I am not sitting in the row with the eminent
But those who are lucky
Sit in the middle and forget
I am on the world’s extreme corner
I can only go beyond and forget.

My people, I have been somewhere

If I turn here, the rain beats me
If I turn there, the sun burns me
The firewood of this world
Is for only those who can take heart
That is why not all can gather it.
The world is not good for anybody
But you are so happy with your fate;
Alas! The travelers are back
All covered with debt.

Something has happened to me

The things so great that I cannot weep;
I have no sons to fire the gun when I die
And no daughters to wail when I close my mouth
I have wandered on the wilderness

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The great wilderness men call life
The rain has beaten me,
And the sharp stumps cut as keen as knives
I shall go beyond and rest.
I have no kin and no brother,
Death has made war upon our house;

And Kpeti’s great house hold is no more

Only the broken fence stands;
And those who dared not look in his face
Have come out as men.
How well their pride is with them.
Let those gone before take note
They have treated their offspring badly.
What is the wailing for?
Somebody is dead. Agosu himself
Alas! A snake has bitten me
My right arm is broken,
And the tree on which I lean is fallen.

Agosu if you go tell them,

Tell Nyidevu, Kpeti, and Kove
That they have done evil;
Tell them their house is falling
And the trees in the fence
Have been eaten by termites;
That the martels curse them.
Ask them why they idle there
While we suffer, and eat sand,
And the crow and the vulture
Hover always above our broken fences
And strangers walk over our portion.

THE CATHEDRAL - KOFI AWOONOR

On this dirty patch

a tree once stood
shedding incense on the infant corn:
its boughs stretched across a heaven
brightened by the last fires of a tribe.
They sent surveyors and builders
who cut that tree
planting in its place
a huge senseless cathedral of doom.

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THE WEAVER BIRD – KOFI AWOONOR

The weaver bird built in our house

And laid its eggs on our only tree
We did not want to send it away
We watched the building of the nest
And supervised the egg-laying.
And the weaver returned in the guise of the owner
Preaching salvation to us that owned the house
They say it came from the west
Where the storms at sea had felled the gulls
And the fishers dried their nets by lantern light
Its sermon is the divination of ourselves
And our new horizons limit at its nest
But we cannot join the prayers and answers of the communicants.
We look for new homes every day,
For new altars we strive to rebuild
The old shrines defiled by the weaver’s excrement.

FUNERAL – JAWA APRONTI

At home Death claims

Two streams from women’s eyes
And many day-long dirges;
Gnashes, red eyes and sighs from men,
The wailing of drums and muskets
And a procession of the townsfolk
Impeded
Only if the coffin decides
To take one last look at the home.

But here I see

Three cars in procession.
The first holds three –
A driver chatting gaily with a mate,
And behind them, flowers on a bier.
The second holds five, and the third too.

A procession
Efficiently arranged by the undertaker,
From the brass fittings on the bier
To the looks of sorrow on the mourners’ faces.

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And Death is escorted
Tearlessly but efficiently
By
Three cars in procession

AKOSUA ’NOWA – JOE DE GRAFT

They say the guinea-fowl lays her treasure

Where only she can find it.
Akosua ‘Nowa is a guinea fowl:
Go tell her, red ant upon the tree.

I met Akosua’Nowa this morning;

I greeted:
Akosua, how is your treasure?
She looked me slowly up and down,
She sneered:
The man is not here who’ll find it!

Akosua ‘Nowa has touched my manhood;

Tell her, red ant upon the tree:
If she passes this way I am gone,
I am gone to load my gun.

No matter how hidden deep her treasure,

By my father’s coffin I swear
I’ll shoot my way to it this day;
Son of the hunter king
There is liquid fire in my gun!

MEMORIES ARE FOREVER – A.A. AMOAKO

Here come the Leavers

No other than the starters
High flyers
Into the creamy sky

Steadily progressing into the swirling sea

Seasoned tributaries to a nation

Semester after semester they shared

Hopes and moans, grabbed and gnashed

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Jammed and jargoned, narrowing and hearing
Now for some safe landing
Into the wide whirling World

Memories are made of these

The T-shirts of Class ’93
Enshrined Graduates of Social Sciences,
Arts and Technology Kumasi, Ghana Africa

ETHNIC VIOLENCE - A.A. AMOAKO

When the arms of love flex

Into the arms of War
Turning minds and twisting nerves
Pain and havoc are here and
Peace is no more

The hatchets of hate strike and blight

The mounds of soft-sweet konkoma yams
The pleasant Nanumba plantations, spelling
Waste and want
Scorch and dust

What image lingers? An old lady and a dog

Relics of a whole village and siblings
Faithful to each other and to the last
Tribal marks of truth
Equal violence

PEACE HAS LOST; WAR HAS WON – A.A. AMOAKO

Conrad’s chief character Kurtz cried

“The Horror”
From deep within the Heart of Darkness
In his cream-pale body
His all-Europe frame
Tottering on greed and ivory
Thus exposed, the whitened sepulcher
Crawled on a myth for all the world to see
But that was in another age,
In a world of fiction too,

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Far from Katanga’s Congo,
From Lumumba, Tchombe and Kasavubu

But what shall we say of

Rwanda Burundi bordering Mobutu’s Zaire
Of Somalia’s War Lords and Taylor-made
Patriotic Monrovian mayhem?
With what toothy smirks
Dare we hoot at alien forces?
After such Hutu-Tutsi Savagery in
The very heart of Africa
Land of primeval rain forests
Sporting nature’s green belt of the Equator
Mankind’s cradle of old
A cavernous modern mass-grave
Black power pulverized
Into dust and mire yields
Blood and eye sore
Black on black bodies
Flotsam and jetsam
Side by side the Congo River
Congo, River Congo
Any better than forced labour?
More benign than foreign oppression?
We shall overcome
We shall overcome
Our hearts of darkness
Someday, there shall be
Peace for Abiola
Peace for Nanumbas and Konkombas
Peace for all
Someday!

AFRICA MANDELA - A.A. AMOAKO

To recall the past

You stand in the future
Towards the present

Liberation, Independence, Freedom

Coups, chaos, crisis syndrome
Tyranny, terror, torture

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Requiring more than local anaethesia
International general amnesia indeed
For another dose of aid
Towards more puppetry on strings?
Africa!

We are telling the wind

We are baring our guts
Bursting with bouts of
Redemption revenge, refuge, reflecting
The Centre hardly holds
Great Zimbabwe’s shrunken granary, Zaire’s sorry rubble
Down south, the rhythm of violence with Buthelezi’s
Inkatha, spear lancing

Black on black force and fury against

Miriam Makeba’s party song Pata Pata
It is requiem time for apartheid
Time for the Mandela promise!

CALIBAN – ABENA BUSIA

This tongue that I have mastered

has mastered me

has taught me curses

in the language of the master

has taught me bondage

in the language of the master

I speak this dispossession

in the language of the master

All my friends are exiles,

born in one place, we live in another

and with true sophistication,
rendezvous
in most surprising places –

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where you would never expect to find us.

Between us we people the world.

With aplomb and a command of languages

we stride across continents
with the self-assurance of those who know
with absolute certainty
where they come from.

With the globe at our command,

we have everywhere to go,
but home.

FERTILITY GAME – KOFI ANYIDOHO

Come back home Agbenohexi Come back home.

A week today at carnival time

young men of the land will gather
for the wrestling duet of song and dance,
maidens will sharpen their tongues and
carve praise images of dream lovers and
I have a gourdful of praise names laid aside for you.

Come back home Agbenohexi Come back home.

In the eyes of town

I will break the evil glance of witches
I will pour you a calabash of pride
I will hold it firm to your lips
till your eyes catch the gleam of stars
till your mind reaches out for moons
till your body vibrates to rhythms of the seas.

Come back home Agbenohexi Come back home.

And your voice shall rise deep across the years

through rainbow gates to the beginnings of things.
It will come floating through seasons of glory
thundering through deserts and painfields

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where our people died the deaths of thoughts and of wars
where they died and lived again
where they die and wake up
with seeds of life sprouting from their graves.

Come back home Agbenohexi Come back home.

Agbenohexi Atsu Agbenohexi

I have held my passion in check for you
holding it fast against storms against thunder
held it firm against the haunting smiles of gods
I have strained my bosom against the sharp edges
of harmattan winds, against the rumbling weight
of May Rain Storms.
I am the rainbow standing guard
across your path of Storms.
Atsu I have died a hundred deaths for you
Each time each night I wake up again and again
in that house we built upon the shores
with pools of troubled seas.

Come back home Agbenohexi Come back home.

All my peers now carry big babies on their back

Still I carry mine in my heart. Sometimes in my loins.
And O she cries so much for you.

Come back home Agbenohexi Come back home.

Kokui my young sister went away last Moon

at harvest time. She swallowed a tiny gourd seed
So now she carries a giant gourd in her belly
for Senyo our dying Chief’s only living son
Even Foli my mother’s youngest child
now speaks in the broken voice of a Man Child
They say at the village school he goes
pinching all the bigger girls on their wosowosos
They always scream but they never report him
And once the teacher caught him
he explained O it was only a little test
to hear the difference in voice pitches
of teenage girls and teenage boys
They say they let him off and now he comes boasting

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he’s man enough to handle a thousand meddling teachers
He even talks of a swift madness there may be
in these l give to wind for you.

Come back home Agbenohexi Come back home.

I have woven a hundred songs for you woven them

all in pillows for your wandering head of dreams
For your bed. I plucked feathers from peacock’s pride
Each midnight moonlight night I walk naked
to the crossroads towards the falling place of the Sun
I lean against the firm bosom of our ancient baobab tree
I close my eyes. I give your name to west-bound winds

And in a careless abandon to joys there are in songs

I stretch my breast against the Moon’s Glory
just waiting to dance you home to your rainbow bed
where you and I may again all over again
in that old Fertility Game first played by Gods
in the seedtime of our Earth.

Come back home Agbenohexi Come back home.

I say today I stand naked beneath our baobab tree

watching your dreams running along the path of storms

I will woo you yet with glories of the Moon while

our hunters break their tongues in strange whispers
of Moon Deity at life’s crossroads
keeping vigil for Sun God’s homecoming
from ramblings across the skies
through Thunder’s gates and Lightning’s path
into house of fugitive dreams

Come back home Agbenohexi Come back home.

Come with me to your rainbow bed

where you and I may wrestle again and again
all over again in that old Fertility Game
first played by Gods in the seedtime of our Earth.

Come back home Agbenohexi Come back home.

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