WASTED YEARS

A poem I wrote a year ago

Father and mother perspired under the sun

So that the cocoa bags could be sold to see me one day

Using my stethoscope and writing prescriptions.

I was to defend my primogeniture by means of self-sufficiency;

To extend my hand to the Akuas and Kwadwos

After me. My attitude proved my intelligence

And got all hands on deck;

I determinedly delivered desired favours

And ran errands when I heard the knell

That called for my assistance.

I gave myself away to the follies of adolescence,

For my hard-earned reputation

To be trampled upon,

When secondary school opened its arms

To embrace my arrival.

I never thought Mama sobbed;

I never thought Papa cried.

The little they had strained every sinew

And beat all odds

To acquire for my upkeep,

I did extravagantly waste

To keep up with the Joneses.

And after years of foolishness,

Oh, the years I never realised,

I woke up from my insignificant dream

To behold the world I'd made stagnant;

I woke up from my dream

To behold those to whom I had been a role model

Stare at my tattered apparel,

And grieve at the outcast friends had turned me into.

I could make them no better people

After father and mother had left

To sleep in mounds with crosses on them

On the grounds of Silence Town.

I grieved very hard,

But years could not recrudesce,

So that I'd take a different route to arrive at a safer condition,

And spare my younger siblings

The new name inscribed on their forehead—

"Orphans"!

—Kingsley Okyere Kwadwo