At this sorrowful stage in the lives of Ghanaians, mourning the final departure of the first President of the 4th Republic of Ghana and the bringer of Ghana’s modern democracy, one of Ghana’s fresh breaths to poetry, Oswald Okaitei writes…
The Rawlings’ Goodnight
Whichever way
You chose to see me, still I lived…
But now, I must
Journey beyond the cage of dust;
Onward to the Land of the foregones
To take my ancestral stool
Akpatsa!
The curtain is down:
My character has no role
In the story in this new chapter;
I am destined to walk on & so I go…
Alas, weep not
My people, weep not: if you must do,
it must be brief
For I have no more role to play,
At least, on this stage;
I must descend down the hill—
into the drift valley—
for the entrance of another (moko aya ni moko aba)…
Yet, amidst your sorrows,
Do not abandon my voice
In the silence of the whispering wind
Nor defile our common oath
To build this Motherland.
We shall cross paths
One day; to tell of our contributed sweats
for the revolution,
To build our Motherland…
Countrymen,
Till we do, I say “Good night”.
Note:
“moko aya ni moko aba” (Ga): one must exit for the entrance of another.
Oswald Okaitei is a multi-award winning poet and spoken word artiste. He is a performance poet who combines music with poetry to paint imagery in the eyes of the mind. …Oswald was awarded the Pan-African Poet and Spoken word Artiste in Ghana in 2016 and is a World Poetry Director from Ghana.
