Poetry by Samual Atsitsre

when we (OUR ancestors) prayed to the god of wisdom, luck, prosperity & protection for a place for us in the future, we forgot and slept—
& while we slept, death crept into our country, unawares

& kept us hostage under its fury for hours,
days, weeks, months & even years, & we waited for answers
from the god of fertility, health, miracle & truth

death did not come with a political colour—it came with death
just as no one had expected, with cloudy skies & a haze of tempting smoke
cutting through all Ghanaian emotions that could ever be expressed.

elephants wept under the umbrella of a man
who also fell asleep in the trebling hands of death
while the rest of us waited for the future to dawn upon us, swiftly (maybe).

and, we cried for our country, her struggle and pain, ceaselessly in hope
while we dwel[l/t] together in unshared voices, broken by
the hunger of death in a land rich with food and precious stone

Bio

Samuel Atsitsre is a Ghanaian with roots from both the northern and southern regions of his country. He is a Public Health graduate from the University of Health and Allied Sciences, Ghana and he enjoys writing about his country. Some of his works have appeared in Tempered Press and other online spaces.