Shadows of a Passing River: Ghanaian poet, Gabriel Awuah Mainoo Eulogizes Professor Atukwei Okai

If I feel I am too weak a man
I will plant my cowardice in this manful world of yours
And if I see death coming close
I will run slowly
And conceal my cowardice abyss your citadel
Where death’s literacy will end
And then we will mock him in a poem
I will borrow the porcupine’s coat
And look so dangerous to him.

It was in these very tears of the moon
Round this flame, the solemn flute
Beneath this nocturnal bough
That father told us of death’s fear
And its feebleness to swim.

Nsuoba Atukwei
We cannot die of unnatural thirst
Such river like you cannot die
No, you cannot

No―you will not die!