Death Looks Different on You - Agbleze Selorm

- dedicated to the late Alfred Kwaku Doe Agbleze

Death looks different on you
Young one that steals from the aged
They say the robbed that smiles steals from the thief
Your smile this day is theft to death
It is a baffle of the mind
It is a break of tradition
In our land
The dead young are supposed to frown
But what is this excitement behind your eyelids
What is this joy your lips can’t speak
Death is ugly
Yours is beautiful
Death is cold
Yours is warm
What is this fire within your body
What is this beauty emerging from beneath your skin
The vultures have lost their flight
There is no wind of pain to lift their wings
The women’s wail is not of pain
It is of confusion
What is this excitement that creeps into the air
What is this peace that comforts the heart
Young one that steals from the aged

7 comments:

Samuel Adjei Ntow said...

Sorry to hear about your brother,a befitting piece you have for him, nice one there selorm. Death is surely ashamed now

Dela Bobobee said...

A very bleak poem yet with an undertone of justification by faith. Indeed human life is a wonderful experience here on earth but definitely not in the realm of the afterlife. The human soul s like a seed that must die, rotten to be able to regrow.

A very solemn reflection of subject of death but unlike Emily Dickinson's bleak inconsolable despair this is a rather refreshing dimension of the necessary evil of death. Life itself is governed by the cyclical concept of time, not linear. The Past is for the ancestors, the Present for the Living and the Future for the unborn, waiting to be born again. That is speaking from the African worldview of life and the cosmology of the human spirit as indestructible.

May the resounding victory of the BLACK STARS OF AFRICA console the bereaved. Greater heights to attain. Black Stars, Black Balloons.

adjei agyei-baah said...

Death come to us all but it is usually painful to see the death of the young as to whether it came as a pain or as a blessing in disguise.we the poets of OGOV stand by you as you mourn the death of your brother.may God give him a peaceful rest.

Prince Mensah said...

The 3Ds of life, death, departure and disappointment, are handled with a very confident amount of maturity in this poem.

Agbleze looks into the eyes of the deep and finds meaning in painful reality.

I do agree with Adjei in offering our condolences and solidarity to Ableze, on the event of his brother's passing.

O' death, where is thy sting? Where is thy victory?

Nana Agyemang Ofosu said...

though one may succumb to death and the pain that churns in the heart of his faithfuls, no one knows how the transition is like. We do mourn our lost loved ones but i wish we all could see behind the walls of death and then pain and sorrow will cease.

But i know death pays all debts and worries so my friend cheer up and God be with him.

Darko Antwi said...

Weldone Agbleze.

Where a written word gives hope as yours have, it makes poetry a word of faith and life and transformation for the human soul - even though our fresh is bound to perish

Darko Antwi said...

May i be corrected by replacing 'flesh' with 'fresh'.