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13.07.2017 Feature Article

An Elegy - Part 1

For Rev.-Col. Emmanuel Boapea Boamah Sintim[-Brown] Aka Kwaku Brown, Retired Chaplain-General of the Ghana Armed Forces 1941-2017
An Elegy - Part 1
13.07.2017 LISTEN

When my only uncle's
passing was announced
to me by phone
last eve,
across
the trundling waves,
I wept torrents
of tears…
there were five of you
on this side
when I arrived,
but you were
the only one
I could proudly
call my own,
the only one
who pledged yourself
to us,
till conjugal duties
party tore us
apart,
it was not
your fault
but mine
for insisting
you treat me
like one
of your own,
I should have died
when I took
deathly ill
after those judged
were abducted
and slaughtered
in thickness
of night,
alas,
God didn't let me
die,
S/He
would not let me
in premature
peace, I
guess…
when your passing
was passed on
to me across
the whistling waves,
I wept torrents
of tears
which were not
really tears
at all,
but reels
and reams
of memories
both good
and bad…
memories hauled in
by colorful
decoy baits
sewn to the mesh
hauled into buckets
of sound and
visual waves
across time
and space
long displaced
by the drift
of movement
and spent-shells
of what we would
rather not
remember…
the wayward
and wicked ways
of the remnants
of painful moments
lived and
forgotten
only to be rudely
washed ashore
and relived
all over
again,
things over which
the growing
man-child had
absolutely
no control –
that most painful
moment
when my dear Aunt
Bea,
your wife
got upset
and fed-up
criminally huge
appetite
'cause
the four-year-old's
plate of rice
and beans
offered me
could barely
slip past
the base of
my throat,
my neck
when you are
looking in
from the outside…
when I got
rudely woken
from my half-eaten
dream in some sort
of suspended
animation
and got shoved
into Reverend
Kurt Bromley's car,
it was a Golf,
curtly sent
on my way home
to Asiakwa,
to Grandpa Yawbe
Sintim…
that morning
was bitingly cold
heavily pregnant
with fog…
Grandpa Yawbe
Sintim,
nurturer
of the broken-hearted
the broken in
spirit and
soul and
mind,
nurturer
of the broken-hearted
rejected and
abandoned –
my parents
were cooling
their heels
abroad,
how neglectful,
my whole world
came crashing
and crumbling
like mud
in a mudslide…
I was 12
or 13 or perhaps
even 14,
I forget which
when the grim
and cold facts
of life and
the Stygian nakedness
of life
came into sharp
relief;
Grandma Akua Yeboaa
had already
waved me off
with the back
of her hand,
so there was
absolutely no talk
of taking
a leisurely stroll
underneath
the breezy
royal palms
of Kyebi,
I, Atoapoma,
who had been born
a slave
to parents
none seemed
to like,
I, Kwame Atoapoma,
born stark naked
and homeless,
save for an
occasional
kindly word or
two from you,
my dear uncle
Kwaku Brown…
once more,
tonight,
I stand
stark naked
on the banks
of this river-of-sin,
the moorings
of my mother's
clansmen and
women, though
I have drunk
and washed
from the source
of Awusu
Pusupusu
Amanapa and
Supong,
Birem and
Densu,
Twafuo and
Kankan-Sekyere…
once again,
I am all
alone
by Aboabo,
all broken-hearted
with only the shade
of my being
for clothes,
naked
to the depths
of my soul…
our elders
have said
it is
the water-carrier
who breaks
the crock –
Wofa Brown,
whatever your foibles
and blemishes
and flaws were,
you are still
the maker
of at least half
of what I am
today;
I stand here
on dry land
'cause it was you
Who first waded
across
the swamp,
with me comfily
seated astride
your shoulders –
my one
and only true
uncle,
my “Wofa”
'cause you allowed
me to take you
for granted,
and in so doing,
you gave me
a second chance
at life –
7/12/17
(RIP)

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