Nairobi Peshawar

Kofi Awoonor, Poet, Essayist, Novelist, Story teller

Today I saw the newspaper,

'Terror kills in Nairobi and Peshawar'.
I saw on Twitter a question.
'Is one reported more? And why?'
An English anxiety, I thought,
far removed from Kenya and Pakistan.

See in mind's eye the moment:
bombers and gunners
enter church and shopping mall
hell-bent on taking life.

Hear the crack of gunfire,
the worship songs explode,
the screams of fear, the wail of sirens,
the voice of a poet raised yesterday in verse.
Gone. Silent.

Recall the words of Awoonor,
opening to Death a door,
dread, dark, devastating denizen
of source-place shameful with destruction,
companion of the prison years.
and through this door a 'homestead resurrected'
with Ewe hospitality -
the fruits of labour in field and kitchen,
the joy of dance and sacred clarity of mind
connecting chieftain and ancestor
in mystical reunion.

Today I learned the poem
of Ghanaian poet diplomat 
that does not belittle bloody destruction
nor extinguish hope
of what lies, universal, unreached, 
beyond the grasp of terror.


©Janet Henderson 21.09.13
In memory of Ghanaian poet Professor Kofi Awoonor
killed by terrorists in Nairobi. Also of those who died 
with him and those who died in the attack on a
church in Peshawar, Pakistan.