Lettura e ascolto intermediate in inglese: Once upon a time

A poem by Gabriel Okara

Gabriel Imomotimi Okara (1921-2019) è stato un poeta e romanziere nigeriano nato a Bumoundi a Yenagoa, nello Stato di Bayelsa, in Nigeria. Primo poeta modernista dell’Africa anglofona, è noto soprattutto per il suo primo romanzo sperimentale, The Voice (1964), e per le sue pluripremiate poesie, pubblicate in The Fisherman’s Invocation (1978) e The Dreamer, His Vision (2005). Sia nelle poesie che nella prosa, Okara ha attinto al pensiero, alla religione, al folklore e all’immaginario africano ed è stato definito “il negritudista nigeriano”. Secondo Brenda Marie Osbey, curatrice dei suoi Collected Poems, “è con la pubblicazione del primo poema di Gabriel Okara che la letteratura nigeriana in inglese e la poesia africana moderna in questa lingua possono dirsi veramente iniziate.”

Per trarre il massimo beneficio dalla traccia audio, si consiglia di fare l’ascolto almeno una volta prima di passare alla lettura del testo.

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.

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Your comments are always very welcome.

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