Dialogue With My Dead Grandfather

Dialogue With My Dead Grandfather There are several ways To have a dialogue with a dead man. Say, my grandfather, Whom I have never met But who believed that fertility Paved the stream of the future. My grandfather, who believed In neither sport nor idleness, Whose hands sing the music of the earth. There are several ways To talk to him. But I cannot talk to him; That is too impolite. You cannot talk to your grandfather, Or he will send you hellhound Till your rudeness turns to respect. One way is to reach Deep into my bones And feel the grace of generations. There, my grandfather Will dialogue quietly With the quiet wisdom Of fallen teeth. He will send me A marrow-telegram To watch out for all The evils of modernity Which disguise as civilization. But modernity, to me, is elephants Languishing behind computers. And children hatching out of eggs Into efficiency apartments. Another way to reach My grandfather is to Kneel by the solemn graveyard, And speak to him In the silence of spirit. There, he will inquire Why my age has forgotten the dead, Wasting our emotions In basketball and soccer fields, Screaming at each other, As if tormented by the devil. But, of course, I shall not agree. The dead have their fences, It is they and us. And life has changed Faster than the color of the clouds. And modern man lives In the hurry and worry Of blue chip stocks And sluggish bread loaves. There are several ways To dialogue with my dead grandfather. One way is for me To tell my father, Who then tells his father; At the limit, my grandfather Will get the message. And to get back to me, My grandfather can do likewise. But what if my grandfather Does not speak our Modern lingua franca, Will my father suffice As a translator? If so, will he agree To carry the message Of a lost generation To a generation deaf From modernity? I do not know. What I know is That to dialogue with a dead man, You have to die somehow— Learn the language of death, Or keep communion with the dead. And in this our age So obsessed with youthful living, Death is a word obscene. —Tijan M. Sallah 5 ...