A Dirge; Whenever It Rains In Accra; I Loved You First, Then What – Three Poems by Ghanaian Writer Roberta Yemofio

A Dirge

For T

beneath the sycamore, your memory

hangs, like fog in harmattan.

there’s an open wound in the ground

you prayed over each morning

where I awake to the smell of your love like morning dew

I too, wish to die, but not by my hand

I mix ash with the blood drained from my wrists,

Mutter obscenities, then smudge it across my forehead like it’s Easter

your husband’s shroud hides layers

of grief that unravels every day with yearning

he recedes as I extend my strength to him

life passes us in a blur of wails,

eulogies, and rites and a ground so wet it eats the casket up

Iamlosingmymind—

My palms are coarse with sand and there’s an emptiness in the place you once filled

Whenever It Rains in Accra

the air is thick with sex, and the ground, with mud.

I pray for women in kiosks — the ones with holes

in the roof where God’s eye seeps through

I pray for children, burdened with parental responsibilities at 9

I pray for men who buy pleasure with tampons

from children who want to stay alive

There are gods who dance to the rhythm of tingling beads

playing on the waists of the wanton

whose orgasms are heightened by petrichor

You cannot build houses with the

mud that forms after it’s rained

I loved you first, then what?

After Christina Rosetti

And whenever someone calls me baby

I hear your voice and envision your face

It never gets old

The lingering, the hopeless wishing

And the fire that burned when you first prayed my name in my mother’s sheets

There you were, fractured in all the parts I believe make a man glorious

So, no, I do not love you wholly, but in fragments

bits and pieces that eventually make you, you

Your undulating torso, growing a little bump, you.

Do you remember when I almost said I love you?

What I did was try to breathe

And if a day is a thousand years for God, then you, my love are late

But I will breathe into a pulse, into a breath then into poetry

And create a symphony for you