KOKROKO: FOR KAMAU BRATHWAITE

It is as if there is a shadow 
of something whole

interrupting the relentless clouds
of snow swirling about us,

and suddenly, the dark body 
of steel, wood, and canvas,

sailing through with the warm laughter 
of a singing troupe drunk

with careless delight,
becomes everything in the world.

This is how the news 
that Kamau Brathwaite had won

the medal named after that tricky, 
tricky New Hampshire poet,

who sardonically goaded
his earnest best friend to war,

after those walking talks on well-worn
paths across the endless English fields,

arrived here in Lincoln in late winter,
the interruption of gloom with holy news.

But no matter, Kamau, 
who is all kindness and light,

asked me a month ago
the truest translation of Kokroko

and there was that truck
hurtling through the blizzard

and those Akan voices singing,
Big God, Mighty God,

Kokroko, Kokroko, 
in holy astonishment.

—
Kwame Dawes is an award-winning Ghanaian-born Jamaican writer and the editor of Prairie Schooner.  His books include Bob Marley: Lyrical Genius (2007), She’s Gone (2007), and Duppy Conqueror: New and Selected Poems (2013).  He teaches English Literature at the University of Nebraska.