Balme Library: A Prosopography of Dead Books

** I recently spent about two months in Ghana, and the next series of poems will recount my observations and experiences. Stay tuned!


Balme Library
The mind of Ghana
The University of Ghana
Named after the imperialist
David Mowbrary Balme
The first Principal
University College of Gold Coast
Our unsurpassed Balme Library
The eternal fountain of knowledge
Oh! With imposing helplessness
Majestic structure in repose
Posing before the dimmed sun
Ah! The past incandescent sun
The sun of Mt. Lago
The sun on Mt. Lago
The great hill of Labadi People
Where Ga gods harvested wind
Anchored on Mt. Lago
Christened Legon
For foaming white tongues
Imperialists' frothing tongues
Tongues of deceit

Balme Library
Balmed like all
Our stable corpse
Corpse of memory
Balming mindsets
Like all Ghanaian libraries
Deserted by governments
Desecrated by administrators
Libraries of muses
Sites of refurbishing the mind
Sites of growing new minds
Ghanaian libraries
Mind-boggled on precipices
Citadels of poisoning minds

Balme Library
Archives of dead materials
Outmoded resources
Mold-infested books
Catalogued in 1948
With thousand fingerprints
Primed in aging computers
Books soiled in time
Books soiled by time
Infected books
Infested books
That diseased the mind

Balme Library
Old books, old journals
Aging books, journals
Books of yesteryears
The burden of memory
Sunset without sunrise
The muses of the past
With lost voices
Sing dirges in pages
Forlorn on shelves
Mourning on shelves
Buried in shelves

Balme Library
Outdated journals
Books fried by time
Journals fried in time
Books discarded overseas
Outmoded books/journals
Trajectoring anti-Africanisms
Trajectoring primeval Eurocentrism
Ghanaian-prized dependency
That nourish young minds

Ah! There is another Balme
Anointed balm
The balm of privilege
The elitists' way
Go to VC's official residence
The palace of Legon
Overabundant resources
State-paid for latest books
State-paid for latest journals
Latest books
Latest journals
Stocked in the VC's libraries
Latest magazines
Paid for by the state
Embossed on VC's dining tables
Decorating VC's guest house
Ah! While students suffer
Ah! While faculty struggle

Ah! Balme Library
One of our narratives
Narratives of victimhood
One of our blackness
The inconvenient truth
Our cultural touchstone
Of solemnizing mediocrity
Of ritualizing ordinariness
Of nativizing poverty
Of neglect
Of birthing the past
Past as present
Balme is saddled
Saddened by the past

*Akadu N. Mensema, Ph. D., is a nationalist Denkyira beauty. She is a trained oral historian cum sociologist and Professor in the USA. She lives in Pennsylvania with her great mentor and teaches Africa-area studies at a college in Maryland. In her pastime, she writes what critics have called “populist hyperbolic, satirical” poetry. She can be reached at [email protected]