Review on 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.

~Gabriel Okara

In this poem, Gabriel Okara shows a father reflecting back on life, he realizes, how soceity has changed the way life was before. The father advises his son to enjoy and appreciate his childhood for by the blink of an eye it could be all gone. He informs his son how the future may be for him. Also the father longs to go back and change the hands of time, to be a child again where everything was so innocent. Rather todays soceity is very brutal and judgemental. Everything being done in life is being scruntinized and criticized in every aspect. He informs his son how people were expressive with their emotions which came from deep within, while laughter were often genuine and heart felt. This got to a point where he had to adapt and fit into the brutal soeity which he lived in. After fitting into this soceity, he learnt how to tell lies which indirectly told his son that he has to lie to become an adult. He is irritated by the fact that he have changed for the worst and how the soceity he lived in is cruel and a pure sinister. The father continues to plead to his son asking him to enjoy his childhood and asks of his son to teach him how to act like a child again, to get rid of the trap adulthood has placed him in.

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