Rediscovery

Celebrated Ghanian poet Kofi Awoonor, aged 78, was one of the 59 people killed in the Al Shabab terrorist attack at the Westgate shopping center in Nairobi, Kenya.  More than 100 people were injured in the attacks.

My colleague Wei Wei Hsing shared Awoonor’s poem Rediscovery.

Rediscovery (1964)

When our tears are dry on the shore

and the fishermen carry their nets home

and the seagulls return to bird island

and the laughter of the children recedes at night

there shall still linger the communion we forged

the feast of oneness whose ritual we partook of

There shall still be the eternal gateman

who will close the cemetery doors

and send the late mourners away

It cannot be the music we heard that night

that still lingers in the chambers of memory

It is the new chorus of our forgotten comrades

and the halleluyahs of our second selves

The poem can be found in A New Book of African Verse.