On this a somber day of days

A poet shares with our people

Our story begun at the intersection

Of epoch-making adventure, and

Near the neighborhood

Of unbounded optimism

 

The poet’s undiluted delight derives

Neither from a boast

Nor from his perch on a post

Elated,

He is heeding the solemn call

To our ancestors, piety to accord

See, if for nothing else,

They lent us life, and left us art

A wealth of wisdom and wit

Only the poor fool begrudges the dead

And shirks a duty held sacred 

 

Our elders say: the arc

Of a story must bend towards a moral

Ours begins at the end of the beginning

Of an episode lain in the treasure trove

Of our folklore

 

Once upon a time,

Imperial conquest corralled

Distinct, diverse peoples,

Stringing strands of traits, and

Scores of tastes,

Into a trophy colony  

 

Our assorted peoples

Hemmed into one people

In the contrived design 

 

Our names overlain with names

At the whim of the conquistador

We know why we name the names

Of places and persons

Yet an ancient people

Now, a curious mix of names

Heathen, aborigine, indigenous

Tribe, native, ethnic  

 

Don’t our elders say?

“Your character reflects the name bestowed upon you”

 

Enthralled, a race would crave

The allure of the colonial:

A tongue to master;

A mellifluous name to assume;

Many a tradition, a proselytized folk

Would forswear as heathen,

But to the received shibboleth,

Folks would swear ample fealty 

 

Soon though, the riveting irony:

Ranks of the lettered few would swell

To offer a soothing antidote

To the swelling imperial carbuncle

Upon a diminished people

At a vanishing pride

 

At history’s crossroads,

Chance and choice crisscrossed: 

A veteran soldier’s unprepossessing

March for a just recompense;  

A lethal gun ready at the trigger:

Adjetey, Odartey, and Sowah

Fallen, as it were, not in battle

In the rice paddies of Burma

Felled they were, on promenade

Upon a castled beach

Yet reparations to their memory

Exacted neither in blood nor in money

But in the glory of a freedom fighter’s

Apt moment for outlawry

 

The bond of 1844

A deed of a people’s grave error of surrender

Now a lightning rod to stoke the embers

Of muted discontent into a raging flame

Of unquenchable rebellion;

Martyrs would shed a profusion of blood

So that within freedom’s fortress,

Folks could profusely prosecute life’s battles

Men of valor, unbroken of will or of spirit,

Would endure the agony of the Usher Fort

So that at the trodden Old Polo Park,

At the voice of freedom’s herald,

A downtrodden folk could frolic!

 

Our founding fathers’ foresight;

A perfect vision in hindsight;

A profit of prescience!  

For they trawled upriver

To the watershed of our motherland’s story

Reckoning what she had been before: 

Ghana, Mali, and Songhai Empire;

Beholding what she had become

Amid the twists and turns of time:

 

Deflowered she was at the onset

Of a dark, orgiastic trade;

The hulking remnants

Lay prostrate,

Pointing heavenward,

Perhaps penitent,

On the beachhead at

Osu, Cape Coast, Elmina and beyond

 

Still, she cuddled precious stones

In her ample bosom;

Unbowed and radiant,

She bathed in the sun-drenched,

Restorative tidal waters

Of the Atlantic realm

At Elubo, Anomabo and Keta

 

She was the sacred summit of Afadjato;

The beckoning Akwapim Range,

Easing into the bucolic savannah

Of grain and game of the vast, rustic North;

She was the lush millennial forest of

An interior sodden with the living waters of

Asuo Afram, Ankobra, Birim,

Otadee Bosomtwe, Densu, Offin, Oti, Pra,

Tano; Black Volta and White Volta;

 

There and then on the cusp of history;

They saw ahead what she could become:

From that Gold Coast colony:

Servile, an unadorned beauty;

Shorn of wealth and worth

To a renascent Ghana:

Free, unmolested, bejeweled,

Wealthy and worthy!

 

Kwame Nkrumah, Kyeretwie Boakye Dankwah,

Ako-Adjei, Obestebi-Lamptey,

Akufo-Addo and Ofori-Atta

Were the storied Big Six  

Pioneers whose was a bequest

Of heroic deeds

We, we are a memorial

In full bloom befitting their seminal toil!

 

And, oh, such as she was,

Such would a young nation

Brazenly answer

The clarion call to liberation 

A few million-folk, un-readied

Yet ready for a venture in adventure 

 

She would parlay statecraft

To breach her scrawny African frontiers

A David in stature yet with epic temerity,

To confront the bemused Goliaths of an era

A Prometheus at the mid-20^th century,

The virtue of a reconfigured continent

She would proclaim such as

To tackle the Herculean task ahead

To that Odyssey she would

Lend a pioneering spirit and verve! 

 

She would wage many a noble war

Against dire human privations:

Saplings in blissful bloom over

Meadow, hill and vale

To inoculate the folk

Against infectious penury,

To loosen the shackles

Of besetting ignorance;

Such would be her evocative enterprise!

 

She would tame game and subdue land

To raise harvest for her humming granaries

A Sphinx of a harbor would realize along

Her Atlantic shorelines

A fleet of her flag-flown vessels would

Venture out to sea and the distant shore

Braving the trade wind and the hurricane

Announcing the spirit of amity

Canvassing for commerce from the comity

Of Nations

 

She would raise a lake across

An nkonson nkonson bo

To raise Akosombo on a grid

A light of hope

To cast a radiant glow

On a new dawn

Of boundless possibilities!

 

And into the arm of the infant nation,

The artist would inject so as to induce

A rush of adrenal romance;

Ephraim Amu: Extolling our forbear’s

Sacrifice and ethos of nationhood;

Theodocia Okoh: Exuding inventive

Genius in a freedom’s flag that flutters at mast

In an anthem, Philip Gbeho; exhorting

A nation to bravery and dignity;

Agya Koo Nimo: Waxing lyrical

In nostalgic folksongs

Of an endearingly,

Enduring troubadour;

And our exultant poets –

Efua Sutherland, Kwesi Brew,

Ama Atta-Aidoo and Atukwei Okai:

Soothing our yearning for triumph

With streams of staves

Strewn with sweet melodies

 

Ah, such as so elated,

Such as she would ooze

With a contagion of hope

Such as so inspired,

Such as she would

Set her Elysian sights

On new heights

 

Oh Ghana!

Jubilant!

Confident!

Bon vivant! 

Even Bohemian!

 

This Ghana!

Now, an artfully knitted quilt

A rich tapestry

In hue and in habit;

In trait and in taste;

In tenet and in testament

 

This Ghana

Like a long colorful yarn

On the loom and lap

In the ambidextrous hands  

Of the Bonwire kente craftsman!

 

This Ghana,

Our beloved land of destiny,

But now a benighted sovereign,

Summons this generation

To a Pax Africana:

To a new Newtonian age of reason

Such as nurtures nature,

Her teeming treasure-store to unleash

For progress yet to be heralded

For poetry yet to be head