where are you?
I woke up to behold the sun rise with you,
We learn to walk hand in hand while my legs were but feeble,
I taught my mind was playing tricks on me,
Because, I remember your strong hands hold me from the dangers of my fear,
Your boldness made my worries but as a fly,
Blown away by the strong winds with which you brought me gifts of large fishes,
I woke up only to find out you were gone,
Where are you?
The one my heart had always longed to be with,
Now I woke up to be told you were gone,
Gone , gone , gone , gone, gone
Gone , never to be seen again.
Where are you?
-The cry of Akosua who lost her sweetheart Akwasi to the slave trade some 300 years ago
This is part of my instalments on the slave trade.Forgive me if I made any errors,corrections are always welcomed
5 comments:
I saw a scene similar to this on a TV show once. Some Americans visited a site in Ghana where many of their ancestors had been stolen away aboard ships to head for a life of slavery. It was a very moving experience for them as visitors, and for me as a viewer.
Nice photo, I love the framing of the landscape beyond by the arched opening of the wall in the foreground.
We often do not think about how hard the slave trade must have been on families. We have the tendency to separate ourselves from those who were taken into slavery and think that somehow those families were different from our own families...that somehow they didn't feel the separation and the trauma as badly as we would.
I watch on tv the desperation of bewildered parents as they search for their missing children and think to myself that this is what it must have been like back then when a family member went missing, stolen, into the slave trade...leaving a mother, child, wife behind wondering...never knowing.
An excellent piece and I like how the poem and photograph work together.
You do ask about any errors so I would suggest that in line 3 it should be "we learnt to walk" [past tense] and in line 5 "held" not "hold".
In line 4 I think you mean "thought" rather than "taught" - but this minor nit-picks do not distract from the power of the piece.
beautiful words and photo :)
Post a Comment