Once Upon a Time - Gabriel Okara

 

Eden - Part II English - II Year UG

[alert-success] ONCE UPON A TIME - GABRIEL OKARA 

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       Gabriel Okara's "Once Upon a Time" is a free verse poem about a father's feelings about cultural change in the native Africans before and after the entry of the Western culture. The poem is a conversation between a father and son. The father describes how the modern society has forgot the cultural heritage. The poem shows how different was the past from the present.

The father describes how people used to laugh with their heart. But now they laugh with only their teeth not with their heart. He praises how simple and honest people were in the past. 

The modern man is carrying a fake personality. He can laugh when he is not happy. He can shake hands with you and plot against you. He can say “Goodbye” when he actually means “good-riddance”. He can say “feel at home and come again”, when he has no love for. 

In the last line of the fifth stanza, he says that he doesn't like what he has become and wants to go back to when he was small and innocent, like a child. He says that he really wants to learn how to laugh with real feelings. 

In the last stanza, the father begs his son to teach him how to laugh and smile like he did when he was young. The poet pleads,

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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