Ancestral Faces

They sneaked into the limbo of time,
But could not muffle the gay jingling
Brass bells on the frothy necks
Of the sacrificial sheep that limped afer them;
They could not hide the moss on the bald pate
Of their reverent heads;
And the gnarled barks of wawa tree;
Nor the rust on the ancient state-swords;
Nor the skulls studded with grinning cowries;
They could not silent the drums,
The fibre of their soul and ours -
The drums that whisper to us behind the black sinewy hands.
They gazed
and sweeping like white locusts through the forests
Saw the same men, slightly wizened,
Shuffle their sandalled feet to the same rhythms,
They heard the same words of wisdom uttered
Between puffs of pale blue smoke:
They saw us,
And said: They have not changed!

By Kwesi Brew

- A Selection of African Poetry (Revised and enlarged edition), Introduced and annotated by K.E. Senanu and T. Vincent, Longman Group Limited, 1976