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“The Prodigal Converses with the Land,” a Poem by Kwame Dawes ‹ Literary Hub

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I am a city in translation. What I say to you is not in the language I carry. You will never understand the pidgin of my soil because you, poet, are always a foreigner. It is true that your grandmother’s bones are interred in me, and I know you hoped that by returning to me you would hear her speaking. But you must know that even more desperate people have come, asking for some sound to carry through. At least you know that I was named by white people, and they have left the noise of atrocities here, so that when those who come back, year after year, instead of speaking of the drama of the ocean beating against the shore, instead of the shouts and songs of the fishermen dragging their catch across the dark sand for the women to collect and take to the market, instead of the clubs, the hi-life, the scent of bread baking at night, instead of the deep forests that reach the edge of the sea, and the way the sunset falls over Elmina, instead of this, all they can talk of are the ones who we

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