Did You Not Know The Man? [A dirge for Kofi Awoonor] By Richard Ali

Did you not know the man you killed as a wildebeest in the press

Of skeltering feet at the Westgate Mall? Was it a flash decision

Reflex running blind through rifle sight to de-humanize

Making stags of men, impersonal, clinical, shooting them down?

 

O mirror likeness of my sorrow, which is the finer sadness—

At the affray of kin or the weaverbird eulogies following?

Or at heirs whose bullets are the bowl balls that toppled

Alchemist Awoonor, mesmersmith, knowing him not?

 

Still now is the chest holding his heart pierced through, full my eyes

Recalling his line – “Dzogbese Lisa has treated me thus” – verse that

Made sterling cause the threads of my harried, desperate Black!

O, cruel Somali brother, did you not know this man you killed?

 

 

Kofi Awoonor, poet and patriarch of African poetry passed on to our memories on September 21st, 2013 in the Westgate Mall Attack in Kenya. He remains an inspiration to a whole lot of poets around the world.

 

 

Richard Ali is the author of  the book, City of Memories (Black Palms, 2012). He is a managing partner at Paressia Books Ltd, and the Public Relations Officer (North) of the Association of Nigerian Authors.

 

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