Written piece
THE COMMONWEALTH RIDE
Lois Antwi
Ghana
About this piece
This poem traces the Commonwealth's bonds across borders, oceans and continents and celebrates the shared tongue and common thread that binds nations through tumult, and the joy of peoples who have chosen, and keep choosing, one another.
THE COMMONWEALTH RIDE
Border to border, one tongue persisting,
An English consonance, ancient and true,
That rides in the dust of the boda-boda's twisting,
Where Uganda's red roads meet the morning dew.
Passport to passport, by ocean and atoll,
From island and city, from savannah and street,
The earth keeps its reckoning, the deep seas their toll,
Yet still we come forward, and still we come to meet.
Through the shaking of ground and the roaring of water,
Through the aurora's cold fire and Calabar's white chalk,
From Antigua's bright shore where the sun fell and caught her,
To the Triangle's silence where the lost vessels walk.
We have held through the tumult as those before held it,
Through the urgent alliance, the yesterday-pact,
The quilt of our brotherhood, time having weld it,
Each thread pulling taut what the long years have stacked.
So we dance, mark it well, as men who remember
The weight of the cloth and the cost of the seam,
Who have worn it through August and carried it through December,
And chosen, still choosing, the Commonwealth dream.