Review: "Once Upon a Time", By Gabriel Okara
Once Upon a Time
Once upon a time, son, they used to laugh with their hearts and laugh with their eyes: but now they only laugh with their teeth, while their ice-block-cold eyes search behind my shadow.
There was a time indeed they used to shake hands with their hearts: but that’s gone, son. Now they shake hands without hearts while their left hands search my empty pockets.
‘Feel at home!’ ‘Come again’: they say, and when I come again and feel at home, once, twice, there will be no thrice- for then I find doors shut on me.
So I have learned many things, son. I have learned to wear many faces like dresses – homeface, officeface, streetface, hostface, cocktailface, with all their conforming smiles like a fixed portrait smile.
And I have learned too to laugh with only my teeth and shake hands without my heart. I have also learned to say,’Goodbye’, when I mean ‘Good-riddance’: to say ‘Glad to meet you’, without being glad; and to say ‘It’s been nice talking to you’, after being bored.
But believe me, son. I want to be what I used to be when I was like you. I want to unlearn all these muting things. Most of all, I want to relearn how to laugh, for my laugh in the mirror shows only my teeth like a snake’s bare fangs!
So show me, son, how to laugh; show me how I used to laugh and smile once upon a time when I was like you.
By Gabriel Okara
REVIEW:
In the poem Once upon a Time, Gabriel Okara recounts and reflects on the past, a time in the poet childhood where society genuinely cared, a time when laughter and friendship meant something and as he reflects on the pasts he realises the drastic change in society and emotions. The poet also ventures into the hipocrasy of adults and how they act in the society, In the present of the poem Okara want it to return to a time when people showed and expressed their true selves with no ulterior motive or a duplicitious action that followed behind their masks. Okara askes his son to take him back to the time when people cared, and to mend their broken society which he stood by and watched become an utter disappointment.
