How does one compile a dossier on someone whose abilities as a writer transcend multiple genres, whose activities involve multiple disciplines, and whose personhood embodies so many roles, someone who has touched so many lives and spoken to countless people? One can only attempt to follow her lead, and so…
Awestruck about Her Who Said Yes to the Gloaming of a Closing Night
A stone’s throw from the crash of the sea
where houses made of blood and rock
painted white to show our dark shadow-play,
a child was born in the village of Kyeakor
some say there were two born that day a girl
child and a boy child, but he arriving late, so
late, chose not to stay
They say the girl child heard sweet and bitter songs she heard
songs of our ancestors, and those yet to be born Ama Ata
Aidoo was a gifted child, others say a strange one, born
before her time or out of time, hearing the rhythms beneath
forgotten memories, she heard and danced to the buried
drumbeat of dreams yet to come for she knew The Dilemma
of a Ghost, or ghosts the desires and hopes of other girl
children like Anowa lost in madness or second vision,
warrior women struggling alone who knew why their twin
refused to stay in the darkened world because there was No
Sweetness Here
As some stumbled in the darkness, our Yaa Asantewaa, Amina, Nzinga
knew her journeys were not into hearts of darkness or illusions of power
but with the steady gaze of Our Sister Killjoy whose black-eyed squint set
the sharp yet comforting words flowing from her lips and fingers hushed
the gossip and babble of the market crowd, so we might hear Someone
Talking to Sometime to learn the simple wisdom of
The Eagle, and the Chickens, or The Birds and Other Poems, or The Days
Spent in exile, demonstrate your pan-Africanism, your love of our beautiful
Black selves, a variety of shapes and styles, no matter where you go, know
An Angry Letter in January can still convey the complexity of these feelings a cautionary tale
for women if not men, stories of courtship, marriage, family all bring Changes: a love story, and
even that ends in death. The only thing they say which does not end, and we are left with the hope that
the solution lies in The Girl Who Can And Other Stories of struggles and negotiations about
Diplomatic Pounds and Other Stories trusting that politicians and those in office know that they
are powerless, even after all the pomp and glitter
After the Ceremonies: new and selected poems for the next generation
After the rituals, the tears, the keening, and mourning, we wake, we awake to the
new morning for we cannot mourn for she took us through this neocolonial night,
she who stayed beyond the “Images of Africa at Century’s End” to assure us that
despite Rejection gossip, or depression on our way to, or from this or that funeral
we can, and we will make time enough this time to celebrate you, your sisters,
and your brothers who have gone, as you slipped first into this world, so you have
closed your gold-tipped eyelashes one last time, as I bent to kiss your cheek, to
join the ancestors, your other self who said, “No to the Glare of the Open Day,” to
lead the way for your sister who fought with The Heart of Her Mind, to leave us
to say “Yes” loudly and clearly, as you did, so say all of us:
say “Yes!” “Yes!”
This poem was
written for Ama
Ata Aidoo, for
inclusion in her
funeral brochure,
as a tribute to her
and in response to
her own poetic
acknowledgement
to her twin
brother who was
stillborn. This
latter point may
come as a surprise
to some, but Ama
Ata Aidoo
discloses as much
in the epigraph to
the poem, “Who
Said No to the
Glare of the Open
Day” from the
collection
Someone Talking
to Sometime. The
choice seemed an
appropriate text to
be in conversation
with as I grappled
with the shock
and grief of no
longer being able
to speak with,
share a meal or
drink tea together.
Someone I had
known for over a
half century, with
whom I had done
all those human
things, now I
carry her smile,
her laugh, the
taste of her
cooking in my mind. I have
only the
memories now,
and I suddenly
was shaken by the
loneliness she
must have felt to
write, “Who Said
No to the Glare of
the Open Day.”
As I returned to
that poem, it
struck me that she
had done a
wonderful thing,
and “We No
more Fear These
images of Hell”
she brought a
feeling of
connectedness,
not just with her
stillborn brother,
with her own
personal sense of
loss, of
detachment from
others, the other
she could
not know, her
words bridged
that gap,
embracing the
anguish of the
mother who has
had too many
babies, too few,
the ones who cry
for joy, for pain,
for the lost
phrase, that
eloquent turn that
describes this
world with
Aching groins
where they say
lie all other
million tales for
the telling of
which even
that eternity
shall not give me
time enough.
No, not time
enough.
So even as her words suggest, seem to insist on the impossibility of an embrace across this lacuna of mortality, she reaches me, reaches us with her bequest of words, this Bird of the Wayside, my Sister Killjoy whose Black-Eyed Squint belies the warmth and compassion beneath. It is only then that I open my laptop and begin to tap, tap, tap the words she wishes to hear, the words others need to hear, to write, to speak.
