Whitney: An Acrostic - Prince Mensah

What a voice, what a voice sent from heaven!
Here we are, browsing memories you left.
I Will Always Love You, you sang to us,
Telling us about heartaches and heart pain.
No one captured love like you did,
Even angels knew not to face you in song.
Yes, we are struggling to remain strong.

Every life is a candle on life's path,
Lighting places where heartbreaks rule.
In your voice was a sweet, sweet spirit that
Zeroed in to secret places in our hearts.
All we wanted was to hear you sing again
But God needed you badly in heaven's choir.
Every time we hear your voice, our hearts
Tell us that you are resting in peace,
Happy to be where troubles cease.

Here we are, to remember your life -
Only God knows why you left us early.
Until we meet again, we shall sing
Songs of love that you immortalized.
This moment, our hearts are heavy with sadness,
Only God knows why you left us early.
Now look to Him, He waits by gates pearly.

5 comments:

Dela Bobobee said...

This is a deeply touching poem. Even though I wept silently while reading it, I love every bit of it. The VO acoustic part was handled with a professional touch, and the grief being expressed by the poet at the loss of a loved one is indeed sorrowful, just like the deeper dirge songs of Kofi Awoonor.

On the part of the past life of the deceased being mourned in the poem, it is rather disheartening how a troubled talent could influence such a string of deep misery. The stack irony of how exacting the price of fame and fortune could turn into isolation through escapism of a world class popular musician like Whitney could be seen in apt words like:


“I Will Always Love You, you sang to us,
Telling us about heartaches and heart pain”

“Every life is a candle on life's path,
Lighting places where heartbreaks rule.”


When the sad words of the poem directed our sorrows to a clouting point, the poet resorts to the philosophical with the effective repetition of words like:


“Only God knows why you left us early.”


But at the same time the poem tries within the limits of human comprehension to assume that,


“All we wanted was to hear you sing again
But God needed you badly in heaven's choir”


The melancholic undertone of the poem is however, laced with inner elation when the poet soothes the pain and heartbreak by making the reader to also take consolation in the biblical promise of resurrection in words like:


“Until we meet again, we shall sing
Songs of love that you immortalized.”


The faint reference to the afterlife is also underscored with eternal bliss


“Happy to be where troubles cease.”


“Now look to Him, He waits by gates pearly.”

Well done, Prince Mensah for such a brilliant song of sorrow to immortalize Whitney Houston. It is a poem that poignantly still reverberates in my mind.

Darko Antwi said...
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Darko Antwi said...
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Darko Antwi said...

Having read a great volume of Prince Mensah's work, I have come to know him as a writer who handles various kinds of poetry, and a miscellany of subjects with a masterful utility. In the field of elegy, I have known him better. I therefore recommend:

If any reader has an appetite for verses of comfort and solidarity, he should look no further than Prince Mensah's poetry, where a nourishing citrus is expressly sliced.

The acrostic meaning in "Whitney: An Acrostic" is very much felt. I have felt it in many ways. I had no idea the deceased singer is middle-named: Elizabeth.

As I say welldone to Prince, may I greet the Most Senior Poet Bobobee, whose commentary on Amoako and Mensah has helped my understanding on some key lines in their poems.

Dela Bobobee said...

Thanks, Snr.Poet Darko Ankwi, for your comments and the mention. I return your greetings.

After you have mentioned it, I became somehow curious and browsed some other poems of Prince Mensah to read. I couldn't agree less with you on your high appraisal of his works. They are truly impressive and show great depths of talent. But let me tell you the truth, his poem currently on OGOV is a poem that will surely remain in my mind for a very long time. I know what I am talking about; its impression is quite deep. Look, when I initially said in the comment section that I wept silently while reading it, it wasn’t just for saying sake. I wouldn’t make a joke of something like that. Believe me It was real.

I just hope someday other readers would see it in the light I see it, or perhaps interpret it at various levels that may even surpass mine, because it is linked with the demise of a legend, a true daughter of Africa. Perhaps it would take centuries to get another voice like Whitney's ultra soprano. That great voice, oh my God. It is indeed a voice made for heavenly choir. No wonder, I hereby join Prince to believe that:

“All we wanted was to hear you sing again
But God needed you badly in heaven's choir.”