A Monumental Tree is Uprooted: An Elegy for a Fallen Commander

There are waterworks in Ghanaians’ faces

All are in deep blue, black and red dresses

Gathered together are persons of all ages

In diametric trauma are folks of all races.

The supreme tyrant has swiftly struck again

People are wailing irrepressibly, they are in pain

Their exertion to revive the peacemaker, is in vain

The strength of the enemy, they could not contain.

The man whose birth was just celebrated with infants

Has unexpectedly left his cherished infants orphans

The very bell that chimed to welcome the new entrant

Now tolls to bid unanticipated farewell to the defunct.

A monumental tree has indeed been uprooted

The journey of a humble mortal is completed

The educator extraordinaire has joined the departed

But his legacy par excellence continues unabated.

Life in villages, he meekly grasped

Life in towns, he readily observed

Life in cities, he proudly witnessed

Life abroad, he keenly experienced

But life in the afterlife, he never lived to tell.

Pain from friends, he courageously surpassed

Pain from countrymen, he boldly embraced

Pain from strangers, he valiantly survived

Pain from sickness, he bravely endured

But pain from heartless Death, he never lived to feel.

May the leader, the supreme epitome of humility

Who turned a lake of tears into a world of hilarity

And a brimful despair into a bottomless sanguinity

Now rest with his maker in perpetual tranquillity.

Emmanuel Sarpong Owusu-Ansah (Black Power) is an Investigative Journalist, a researcher and the author of Fourth Phase of Enslavement (2011) and In My End is My Beginning (2012). He may be contacted via email (andypower2002@yahoo.it).