From the Archives: "Dreams" by Maame Esi Abassah

Today is Tuesday
Our fathers do not go to sea
Staying at home and mending nets
Battered by fierce weather

It is a joy to
Walk along the Chorkor beach
In the arms of a loved one

One cannot admire the waves
And ignore their charming ripples
At home the lights are off
Akosombo Dam is too low
To inspire turbines to generate light
In Genesis
Odumankuma once directed
Let there be light
And there was light
But back home
We have been sleeping
In darkness
With nature
My brothers, is it not time
To build another dam?
To generate enough electricity
For our homes and factories?
It is dawn
We inhale the sweet fragrance
Of jasmine and ivy
We hear the melodious songs of
Birds

We are together under divine
Dispensation
The aura of nature
And the greatness and
Grace of Odumankuma
Where are the charismatic
Fortune tellers of Gbawe?
Where are the anointed minds
To heal troubled and depressed
Souls of the motherland?

Awake, sellers and
Salute the rich promises of
Another day
Let virgin girls wriggle waists
To joyous beats of Adenkum

Children of the shrine
Bring enough calabashes
Bring enough corn wine
For the outdooring of
Sons destined for prosperity
And greater exploits

Sing, young choristers
Sing in praise of Odumankuma
Compose new hymns and
Folk operas in praise of
Odumankuma

We still hear songs of birds
As the sun suddenly appears
To reign
What a delight!
It is a new bright morning.


Old poems at OGOV don't die, but live on in our archives! Every once in a while we will dust one off for our newer readers to enjoy. "Dreams" was orginally published on OGOV on October 6th, 2007.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

* applause*

wonderful, surly one of the best things i read on the net in long months.
I love the optimistic natural way this poem, manifesto, ends and the fact that it calls on social/political (=our lives). I miss that so much in most of waht i read.

thank you so much for this one.

Darko Antwi said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Darko Antwi said...

'One cannot admire the waves / And ignore their charming ripples'

Even With the above lines only, I believe, Maame Esi Abassah will long be remembered for the remarkable authorship of 'Dreams'.

Welldone

Leila Coleman said...

The stanzas don't have definite meaning. They are not complete thoughts. No commas, semi-colons to show that there are pauses or sentences. The poem needs revisiting. it is, i must frankly say, a poem without proper structure.