Kwame Nkrumah 1909-2009: A Song of Redemptive Grace

*

**By Kwabena Akurang-Parry, Ph. D.

Dear Mother Africa,

Kwame Nkrumah has returned to your terrain of hope

And your children are secured in your fertile womb

With the Volta, Congo, Niger, flowing in their veins

The seer of clouds of African rebirth has returned home

And the Sahara is yielding wholesome fruits of humanity

The eternal Odum of Nkrumah shield all your children

Happily today, the Sahara has blossomed into forest

Mother, the harmattan induced by the Atlantic is over

In the dry season the Volta and Zambezi timelessly flow

And the great Gambia has overpowered the Atlantic

And the rich Kalahari has become the fountain of gold

And Nkrumah has sent Serengeti lions to the moon

And termites of Kano are molding 21st-century mounds

And birds of Madagascar are bridging your distant parts!

Mother, Nkrumah has happily announced to your siblings

That your children have returned to your glorious home

Where the cloying clay is clamoring for awakening dawn

And Nkrumah nurtures hope in the African sarcophagus

Mother, your children visit Nkrumah’s sarcophagus

To grow in his fertile soil of global African rebirth

The black light in the sarcophagus is illuminating the hope

There, Mother, the cusp of global rebirth is flowering

Mother, the echoes of Nkrumah’s rebirth fill the dawn

Your children listen to his new energetic call of hope,

They listen to his inspiring beats of rain-drops of hope

On the eaves of Nyaniba’s magnificent Nzema fortress,

Mother, his use of ancient Nzema, Zulu, Yoruba herbs,

Is healing the splurge of the decades of Atlantic decay

And Nkrumah’s Ghana is on the pathways of progress

And Mother, you are at the center of the cusp of rebirth

Mother, Nkrumah has stretched forth his zenith hand

And we see in His hands the matchless Bronze of Ile Ife

Mother, the incandescent Kente illuminates his inner soul

His back is rested on the enduring Zimbabwe fortress

Nkrumah is undyingly humanizing your nests of hope

The Sahara and the Kalahari are in full endless bloom

Mother Africa, at the dawn of the 21st century

With the second glorious advent of the Osagyefo

Your ebony children have taken the first strides

Mother, your dark, ebony children

Are bearing the cusp of global rebirth

Mother, your dark, resilient ebony children

Are hoisting the global flag

It is the flag of Nkrumah’s rebirth of hope

And Nkrumah has summoned the sun to stand still

Your children took the first steps on the Serengeti

And your children will take the first steps on Mars

There, the cusp of rebirth belongs to Nkrumah’s Africa

*Thematic portions of this poem are abridged from Kwabena Akurang-Parry,

"The African Cusp: 21st Century" (An Epic Poem), UFAHAMU: Journal of the

African Activist Association, 29, 2-3 (2003), 209-217.

**Kwabena Akurang-Parry is professor of History at Shippensburg University,

PA, USA. He can be reached at kaparr@ship.edu