Gabriel Okara’s ’Once Upon a Time: Generational Conflict, Conformity, and Colonial Power

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Joe: So I have learned many things, son. I have learned to wear many faces like dresses, home face, office face, street face, host face, cocktail face, 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

Maiya: Hello, and welcome to Beyond the Verse, a poetry podcast brought to you by PoemAnalysis.com and Poetry+. I'm Maiya, and I'm here with my co-host, Joe, who just read that wonderful excerpt from Gabriel Okara's Once Upon a Time, and that is the poem we're talking about today. We'll be discussing [00:01:00] generational learnings, animal symbolism, and the importance of authenticity. Now thank you, Joe, for that lovely reading.

Before we get into the poem itself, I'd love to do a little bit of a recap on Okara's life and history. Now, he was born in 1921 and died in 2019. He was a Nigerian poet and novelist, and He died in an independent Nigeria, so lived through this period of kind of great, great change. He attended an elite colonial school and actually trained as a bookbinder, and that was his primary job for a very long time before moving into government information services. He is widely regarded as one of the pioneers of modern African literature.

He's part of a much wider canon of writers and poets like Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, both of whom we actually covered in season one of this podcast. So if you have any kind of wider interest in that, I would strongly recommend you go and check out those episodes. I believe it's episode 14 and episode 20. but yeah, today we're talking about Once Upon a Time. This poem published in 1978 in The Fisherman's Invocation . So Joe, I'm gonna hand [00:02:00] over to you to tell us a little bit about the poem before we really get into the message of it

Joe: Thanks, Maiya, for that really great background information about Gabriel Okara. And again, I would second your suggestion to listeners to go and check out those earlier episodes on two of Nigeria's other kind of great writers. It really is this incredible period of literary output in Nigeria in the middle of the 20th century, and I really enjoyed those episodes, and maybe we'll find some moments to discuss links between the poems later on in this episode.

In terms of today's poem, it's kind of deceptively simple, and we'll try to peel back some of the layers, to unveil some complexity as we go. But effectively, what we have here is a single speaker who is addressing their son, and the poem begins as a polemic, a father almost lecturing their child about the way life used to be different, particularly, on the subject of authenticity that Maiya mentioned earlier on, the idea that things were better when.

And this is quite a familiar tale. I'm sure lots of us can remember conversations we might have had with our own parents, or indeed, if you're a bit older than Maiya and I, you might, notice that this falls into the pattern of conversations you have had [00:03:00] yourself with your children.

The sense that I'm the parent, I know best, and this is the way the world used to be, and perhaps it was better in my day, or in this case, perhaps even before the speaker's day. What's really interesting, though, is as the poem goes on, the relationship between father and son is subverted, and actually, by the end of the poem, the father is looking to the son to teach them how to recapture the past.

And the poem has this lovely subtle transition over the course of its few stanzas. It's not a particularly long poem. Unfortunately, we can't read all of it because it's not out of copyright, but hopefully you got a sense from those stanzas that I read earlier of the richness of, the voice, but also the kind of caustic nature.

It's a really cutting poem at times. I mean, you know, who amongst us hasn't wished to be able to say good riddance instead of good morning from time to time? But Maiya, before we get into the poem itself, as you and I know, we often start by thinking about titles, and this one is so rich and so kind of ripe for analysis.

Once upon a time, and those four words are, of course, instantly recognizable because they are usually the way that fairy tales and nursery rhymes begin, especially in the Western [00:04:00] canon.

And what I love about that title is it immediately frames the poem and frames the memories that the speaker claims to have of the past in doubt. it kind of immediately casts doubt on the likelihood that this world that the speaker remembers was ever truly real because the poem is framed like a nursery rhyme, and we actually get the repetition of those four words in the last stanza as well.

So, Maiya, I think I'd like to start there, really. I mean, what do you think the significance is of Okara framing his own poem, which is about the past, with this hint of the fictional right from the outset

Maiya: It's such a great question, Joe, and I think where I always lean with this particular title is that the fairy tale serves two very different purposes. Because, of course, yes, a fairy tale brings an element of fiction. It's not a true story. That immediately leads you to doubt how authentic this story is going to be, how authentic the narrator is going to be in saying, "Okay, yes, everything used to be better in the past." But actually, it also introduces an element of magic, and I think that's what [00:05:00] we contend with throughout this poem because you have this really caustic, as you say, severe sense of how disengaged the people in this poem have become, and how, as we've progressed into the future, people have become less and less caring. And I find that the fairy tale element of this poem really introduces a level of magic back into the past. And of course, I think memory has a lot to do with this, because in the vast majority, when you remember the good times, there is an element of magic and happiness and joy and glory to those memories.

It's very rare that you take a great memory and don't remember it in a positive light. So I think this dual function creates an immediate sense of tension in this poem because you're instantly, as a reader, kind of battling your own sense of belief. I think it's such a fantastic way to offer two very different interpretations in this poem. And, you know, as we say throughout all of our episodes every poem is up to interpretation. You can take it whatever way you like based on the experiences you've had, based on your interpretation of it. So I really love looking at poems like this where you [00:06:00] have an immediate influx of magic and joy and happiness as set against doubt and pessimism. And I think really it's a wider reflection of what the poem stands for. A lot of the time when we look at titles, you know, in our last episode, we talked about Invictus, which actually pulled a title from the poem itself and kind of imposed value on it after it was written, whereas this title, for me, feels very tied to the poem. It feels very important to carry a message through because once upon a time, the fairy tale, the memory, the history is exactly what we're talking about in this poem. So to me it feels very relevant, but I'd love to know what you think, Joe

Joe: Well, I think you've touched on some really kind of important points there. You mentioned the word glory.. a few moments ago, and I think that word is really interesting because when you have the fairy tale framing and you have this, figure of the son who never speaks in this poem but is the central addressee of the poem, I can't help but think of the kind of evocation of the prodigal son, the great son, the son who shall inherit, the kind of King Arthur figure almost.[00:07:00] 

And there is so much weight and moral weight imbued upon the figure of the son who never speaks, but all of the speaker's hopes are rested upon the shoulders of this child, we assume. Um, of course, it's perfectly possible the son himself could be an adult, but it feels more as though it is an adult father speaking to a, a not yet adult son.

So I think on the one hand, the evocation of the nursery rhyme and the fairy tale elevates the status of the characters in the poem to that kind of mythic status. But the other thing that I'm really interested in is how the evocation of nursery rhymes and fairy tales deliberately blurs the geographical and temporal, kind of certainty of the poem.

This is obviously a Nigerian writer writing in fairly newly independent Nigeria, and yet once you frame it as a fairy tale, it exists in fairy tale land, because fairy tales don't tend to exist in countries that we recognize. They tend to be in faraway kingdoms that have no name in many cases. And I think especially given we're gonna get into some of the post-colonial interpretations of this poem, the decision to [00:08:00] obfuscate where this conversation is taking place and when is a really curious one

Maiya: I couldn't agree more, and I think bringing in the post-colonial now is really, really critical for anyone who's listening to this episode to really understand this poem. Because throughout this poem, you can take it at face value, but I think there is something bigger at play here, especially when we talk about colonialism and the father-son dichotomy. You are looking at someone who is, as a father, in a position of power, and a son who is not. So does the son being voiceless in this poem and the father inhabiting this sort of very commanding voice create a pressure that we only start to see kind of towards end of the poem?

I'm looking particularly at the closing stanza that says "So show me, son, how to laugh. Show me how I used to laugh." This is a lot of pressure and demand to place on someone who we aren't certain in this poem has the ability to do that. We don't have a sense of age. So as you say, Joe, where you don't really have a [00:09:00] concept of location, time, you also don't have a concept of age.

Does this speak to the sort of newfound newborn independent Nigeria still finding its feet? Or does it weigh more heavily on the impact of colonialism out of that fact?

Joe: I mean, it's a fascinating question, and I think what I love about that interpretation is what you're doing there is you're looking at it, from the outside in, and you're thinking about the relationship between father and son being indicative of a post-colonial mindset. But even within the context of the poem, there is a post-colonial reading here because the father effectively is lauding and celebrating and mourning the loss of this idyllic past, and that's laced with interpretation.

Because on the one hand, it's very easy to read this poem and to think that this is longing for a pre-colonial age. That is, of course, an age that, Okara himself never experienced. He was born into a country that was already under British rule. So is this a kind of echoic longing for a past that nobody alive ever witnessed?

Or is he longing [00:10:00] for Nigeria under British rule, which would be an odd thing to long for as a kind of newly independent nation. But when I was doing the preparation for this episode, I had to remind myself of this, 'cause there's this temptation we often fall into, which is to think of independence as an inflection point, and there is a before and there is an after, but there are almost no subcategories of that.

Actually, in many ways, that is still a Eurocentric view, to think the only thing that Okara could be harking back to is the time before independence, as though post-independence was something singular and consistent, and of course, it isn't. As we mentioned earlier on, this poem is published in 1978. At the point that this poem is published, Nigeria is under military rule, so it is an independent country, but it is not a democratic one

And we have to resist that temptation to look at things in a Eurocentric lens. We're obviously both Europeans. Because there's every possibility that this has nothing to do with the period in which Europe or European countries controlled what is now Nigeria, but actually, he is simply longing for the Nigeria that was newly independent but still had a civilian government.

And I think it's really important for us not to [00:11:00] fall into the trap of treating pre- and post-independence Nigeria as a binary, because of course, within pre- and post-independence, there are numerous good years and bad years and worse years and better years. And I think we mustn't lose sight of the nuances of the history if we're looking through a post-colonial lens.

Maiya: That is a great point to bring up, and actually to add to that, even during colonial times, that doesn't mean that things like culture and history and tradition are lost. There are still pockets within that where culture is actively practiced. Just because it's hidden or policed or monitored, that doesn't mean it goes away.

So it actually really leans into that first stanza that you read at the opening of this episode, Joe, where we talk about home face, office face, street face, host face. This suggestion that you have to don the clothes, don a mask in order to portray something that you're not.

We've seen time and time again in studies of colonized countries that in order to try and minimize the horrors and the subjugation that [00:12:00] occurs within colonies, there is a mimicking or a mimicry of, clothing, manners, traditions but it's all obviously a mask in order to try and fit the, what is now considered the norm. And I find it really interesting that we have this very direct representation of all of these ways in which Okara or the speaker feels they have to fake it in order to fit in with this new, uncaring, uncertain, very disengaged population. Whereas actually you have the feeling that this speaker is longing for the things that they miss about their fairytale, their old life, those are still buried somewhere in there, but when you affect something for so long, the question does remain how much of that still belongs to you.

If you are someone who is kind and generous and loving, but you spend 40 years of your life pretending to be hateful, there's no doubt that that's going to impact how you go about living in the world. And I love the idea that in this poem as you get towards the end and we have the speaker [00:13:00] questioning his son and saying, "You need to teach me how to do all of these things again.

I used to have this and now I don't know how," I don't think what we're left with is a speaker who still own the capacity to do that, but the teaching and the inaction of that, I think, is more the problem. So I do think there's a real link between, you know, the faces and the, costumes that we wear, and how much they impact who you deeply are.

I guess my question, and Joe, maybe you can elaborate on this, is how much do we put trust in this speaker? How authentic do we think this voice is? Do we think they're someone who has lost all of those things, or do we think that longing comes from the place inside them that still has those ways of loving, those ways of being in the world?

Joe: I mean, it's a fascinating question. I don't know if I have the ability to answer it, but I'll give it a go. But I think just before I come to your question, just to pick up on a couple of things you were saying. Of course, this is not limited to, you know, people living under colonial rule. Of course, as we mentioned, this poem is written after colonial rule, But it's a lived experience of particularly people of color around the world.

But you know, [00:14:00] not just people of color in largely white societies. You know, the idea of code switching, the idea that you have to kind of wear the mask and adapt to various situations in which to advance yourself or in certain cases, just keep yourself safe. It's that sense of who we are as being something multifaceted. Rather than singular.

What ultimately this speaker is longing for is a period of their own life where they were one thing, and that's probably why they look to the child, because children are more singular. Children are less willing or able or perhaps just don't see the point in adapting themselves and their behavior in front of others.

I'm sure there are many parents listening to the podcast who probably wish they could make their kids adapt in certain situations to behave themselves or to not say something improper. But children don't do that, broadly speaking. So what I think your question, at the core of your question, is are we who we are because of how we present ourselves, or are we who we are in spite of how we present ourselves? And that ultimately is the central question in this poem. If you wear the mask for long enough, does the mask become who you are, or do you always retain your, quote-unquote, " [00:15:00] true identity" underneath the performance?

And, you know, I mean, it's a massive philosophical question. It goes right the way back to, you know, Aristotle in the, the Western tradition, the Aristotelian question of you are what you repeatedly do. Aristotle would say that if you act a certain way, that's who you are, not a part that you are playing, because ultimately It's that sense of who we are as being something multifaceted.the things you do become the person you are.

And before I throw back to you, Maiya, the thing I would really like listeners to bear in mind is this poem is doing multiple things at once, like every great work of art. On the one hand, we have a parent who is worried about their own loss of identity and is looking to their child, as parents often do, as a way of symbolically rescuing the things that they themselves have lost.

I cannot recapture the years I've lost, but maybe my child, my son, can avoid the same mistakes, and therefore I can kind of live the better version of my life through that child. But if we look at this in that broader, more symbolic, more post-colonial context, we can almost view this as two versions of a country talking to themselves, and the idea that an older generation of people in Nigeria looking to the younger generation and trying to [00:16:00] express fear that the country is losing itself.

It's losing its own identity. It's worn the mask too long. And that conflict at all points in this poem between the individual struggle of a father and their son and a kind of national struggle for identity and for meaning is always at play in this poem

Maiya: But for sure, and I mean there's this language of robbery as set against preservation, which absolutely ties into this narrative of uncertainty in a growing country. I mean, in the second stanza you have this reference that the speaker makes to someone shaking your hand, but at the same time with their other hand robbing your pocket. And then later in the poem we have these moments where a smile is preserved in a portrait, And the speaker says in the second to last stanza, "I want to unlearn all these muting things. So there's this idea that language is being stolen, personality is being stolen, culture is being stolen, but the things that are being preserved are the wrong things. And I find it so fascinating that the focus on the art and the preservation in this poem is a fixed [00:17:00] portrait smile of a fake smile. It's, again, leaning into this vision of the mask, something that isn't absolutely true. And we spoke about this e- extensively in the poem My Last Duchess by Robert Browning. The episode we did on that, we discussed how framing someone, their portrait, doesn't really absolutely capture their essence.

It's a way of control and a way of having power over someone, because you can pick and choose the things that you want to preserve. And I find that you have this conformity in the preservation of this poem. We have a line specifically that Joe read at the start of this episode, " All their conforming smiles like a fixed portrait smile."

So the things that have been preserved in this poem aren't actually true. It's not the essence of them. It's the essence of the mask of the presentation of the thing, to be very convoluted about it. You have layers on layers on layers in this poem, so I think it's so critical that we can look at this from a post-colonial perspective, a pastoral, familial connection. There's so many ways that we can take the threads of this poem [00:18:00] and, and pull them out into something wider. But I love that relationship between preserving the things that aren't necessarily true, but also the robbery of the things that are.

There is an impression that something is being taken here, or taken for granted, and I'd, I'd love to dive into that just a little bit

Joe: . Well, you've picked out what I think is one of the strongest images in the poem, which is that moment in which the speaker describes a handshake with the right hand while the left hand goes into the empty pocket, and I think the word empty is important there. The idea that perhaps this person never had anything to begin with or they have been robbed before.

There is a sense here of a repeated action. And if we continue with the post-colonial interpretation for a moment, you can almost view that image as a kind of symbol for the British Empire, and it, it's the way in which it robbed Africa of much of its natural resource and much of its natural wealth, while acting under the proviso of the civilizing mission, which is, of course, this thing that underpinned so much of British colonial rule, the idea that the three Cs, civilization, [00:19:00] Christianity, and commerce, were being taken from Europe and exported around the world.

Whereas, of course, we look at that in the twenty-first century with a, a more cynical eye perhaps, or just a more honest eye perhaps, and we look back and say, well, the image of shaking hands, which of course is associated with good manners and civility, is actually here being used to hide the real intentions of why these people are there.

They're there to rob with the left hand while kind of acting out civility with the right. And a-as an image, it's so simple, but it's deeply affecting, the idea that you can give with one hand or seem to give with one hand, while actually you are abusing and stealing with the other. I mean, it's such a, powerful indictment of empire and of extractive colonialism without having to name any of those things as such.

Maiya: What a brilliant point, Joe. I mean, it really draws out the central message of this poem, I think, and I find in Okara's poetry that Those really simple moments you can extrapolate across the entire poem.

It leaves you with such a strong impression. And one of the other lines that really stands out to me is [00:20:00] in the second to last stanza where we talk about the image of the snake. And I know you've done a little bit of research on this, so I'll happily hand over to you. But when we talk about civility, there's definitely something in this poem about the relationship between the bestial and the civil, the human and the animal.

And it piques my interest that the speaker refers to themself. It's the only point in this poem where the speaker refers to anyone as animalistic, and it's a self-inflection. So I'd love to dive a little bit into what you think that means and why we have the image of the snake here when actually this is a relatively human poem throughout

Joe: Well, as regular listeners to the podcast will know, an opportunity to do a deep symbolic dive on an animal was just too good to turn down. What I like about this reference to the snake is that it's deliberately unclear, and, and the longer you think about it and the more context you invite into that interpretation, the less clear it becomes.

And I, I really like symbols that seem obvious to start with but actually become murky and obscure the more you look at it. And again, for me, this is all about how [00:21:00] Eurocentric or how kind of Western-centric we are when we read the poem, because in the Western tradition and the European tradition and the Christian tradition, there is a very clear association with the snake.

It is a negative symbol. It is a symbol associated with the devil, and again, we've talked about this in previous episodes, that you go back to Genesis, the snake in the Garden of Eden, the, the deceiver, and it is a wholly negative image. There are very few positive Western associations with serpents. And initially, you read this poem, and it seems to be exactly that.

The person is lamenting, the speaker is lamenting their own decline, their own loss of real laughter, and they acknowledge that when they laugh now, they resemble a snake. Their, their teeth are like the fangs of a snake. And it appears to be a kind of berating thing. What I love is that if we peel back the layers and we don't look at it solely through a, a Western or Eurocentric lens, there's something a little bit more complicated going on because, Okara was born, in the Niger Delta for those listeners who aren't aware, pre-colonial Nigeria was a very, very complex system of [00:22:00] different tribes, different ethnic groups. It's not a singular thing.

And the group to which Okara belonged, were called the Ijaw. And the Ijaw were, an ethnic group, a tribal group that lived around the Niger Delta, which is where Okara was born. And in Ijaw cosmology, Odumu is the colossal sacred python and the chief of all water spirits who lives in the Niger Delta and is worshiped as one of the kind of principal gods and deities of that group.

And so again, you almost condemn yourself, by another means if you read this poem and only think about the snake in the Christian context. There is perhaps a world in which this speaker looks in the mirror, sees that their teeth resemble the fangs of a snake, and actually views that as something positive.

And it's a reminder of how when we're talking about poems and writers that cross culture in a way that Okara absolutely does, because he's writing from the continent of Africa with, certain assumptions, symbols that he has inherited that perhaps Western readers don't have, but he's also writing in English.

He's also writing using [00:23:00] a Western fairy tale framing. He's also writing having attended a colonial school. And whenever we read a writer who transcends cultural and literary boundaries like that, if we only view the symbols from one perspective, we're missing the whole story. And finally, before I throw back to Maiya, there's a third possibility here. Possibility one, if we view this from a European Western-centric view, is that the speaker is associating themselves with a snake and is doing that to berate themselves, to criticize themselves, because the snake is a negative image.

Option two is that they're actually drawing on a whole another tradition in which the snake is something to be revered, in which case they are perhaps complimenting themselves. There is a third option here, which I think actually might be the most interesting, which is that they are criticizing themselves because they have forgotten that pre-colonial inheritance to which they should have known.

And actually, it's that sense of losing who we were the more we play the part. And of course, in post-colonial countries like, especially a country like Nigeria, even after the British left, the British influence in institutions, in universities, in [00:24:00] businesses was still massive, and in many ways, the best way to get ahead in life was to imitate the colonizer or the ex-colonizer as much as you could.

And there is this dark, but I think really moving interpretation that this symbol, this moment at which the snake is evoked, is the moment in which the father unknowingly reveals that he has lost part of his own cultural inheritance because he's been so used to playing the part of the colonizer

Maiya: You jumped right in on exactly what I was going to say. I mean, what a beautiful subversion to leave the reader with. I mean, this lasting impression of that in-betweenness, the liminal space between absolute certainty and affirmation of your historic past, and the uncertainty of the future and the things that you've lost along the way to become who you are now.

Existing in that in-betweenness must be so incredibly tough, and I think the way it's established in this poem is so beautiful. And I find that this poem is incredibly cyclical, and what you can actually do is reread the poem and start to pick them out once you [00:25:00] reach the end.

So where they weren't obvious on a first read, they become incredibly obvious on a second. I want to refer to an earlier stanza where we have the speaker talking about being welcome at people's houses. People telling them, "Come again. You can visit whenever you want." And actually every time they visit, the door is shut on them. Again, I think we have this reference to the fact that no matter how many masks you wear, if there is a difference, if other people view you as something different to themselves the barrier still exists. So again, looking in the mirror in this last moment, seeing the snake is, is this beautiful image, but the mirroring is so, so critical here because the mirror holds up a reflection of who you are, who you were, and who you could be.

It's the only moment of self-impression. The rest of the time we explore a speaker who has their thoughts and feelings about things, but until you look yourself in the eye and decide who you're going to be, that's when the world for you shatters in this poem. And I, I love that it comes at the end because it leaves the reader with this really strong [00:26:00] sense of justice. Whether it's justice to find who this person truly was, whether you read it through the post-colonial lens and you explore what that means in the grander sense of history. I don't want to call it a volta because obviously it's, not written in that way, but there's such a dramatic shift here that I find it so moving, and I just think, I think that's such a fantastic way to close the poem out

Joe: I couldn't agree more. And the other thing I was just-- it literally just occurred to me as you were saying that is this is a poem in which a father is speaking to their son. We often think of a mirror as being a kind of symbol of objectivity, but it's not. Of course, it's not, because just because you're looking at something reflected in the mirror doesn't mean you don't carry your own assumptions and projections and desires for what you want to see or fears of what you will find looking back at you.

It's the same with the father speaking to the child. The child is a warped reflection of who the father is. And as Maiya mentioned earlier on, we never get the child's voice here. The child is a canvas onto which the speaker projects their own desires, but also their own fears. And exactly the same process happens when you look in a [00:27:00] mirror.

You want to look a certain way, you wish you still looked a certain way, and all of that emotional baggage is at play every time we talk about a reflection in a literary context. Because think about the way we look at our own reflections in the real world. We're not objective. Sometimes we look better than we think we do.

Oftentimes, we tell ourselves we look worse, we look older, we look uglier, we look more tired because we have all of the emotional baggage that we carry when we're looking at the reflection. It is a false objectivity. And I find that by mentioning the physical mirror in this poem, the speaker just alludes to the fact that what they have been doing throughout the entire poem is a kind of flawed self-investigation in this conversation or monologue delivered to the child

And just as we draw this episode to a close, Maiya mentioned cycles earlier on. The, title, of course, Once Upon a Time, we get that referred to again in the last line of the poem when the speaker announces, " Once upon a time when I was like you." And I mentioned the ambiguity innate within those words, [00:28:00] once upon a time, and we get that ambiguity at the end, and it's one of the things I love most about this poem, is how it refuses to offer any degree of certainty, because we have no idea whether it is true that the speaker was ever like the person that they are addressing.

In many ways, it would be pointless even if it was true for us, because we don't know anything about the person that's being addressed, because the only thing we know about them is a projection. At no point in this poem does the addressee get to define their own identity. Their identity is defined for them.

So whether or not that identity is accurate is irrelevant, and I, I love that ambiguity at the end. But what do you think, Maiya?

Maiya: It's definitely an interesting one. I find that the poem asks you to reread it. I know I mentioned that before, but I think any poem that is uncertain in this way, you have to delve a little deeper. You have to reread. You have to find your own footing within it. And, you know, I've read this poem before, but even in our research for this, I was, going over and over it and combing through the poem to really find what struck me the most, and that ambiguity opens so many doorways . And I, think the way that we've discussed this poem [00:29:00] as having sort of a greater meaning allows people to apply it however they wish to their own lives, to their own sense of history. And any sort of lack of certainty, Any ambiguous ending is an invitation, personally, is how I feel about it. Any ambiguous ending offers you as the reader your opportunity to take this poem however you wish. Saying, "Once upon a time when I was like you," You have this blending of exactly what we were talking about at the top of this episode, magic and joy and happiness and mythology to a point, and reality and history. And the blending of those two things is where we reach as close to a truth as we can, whether that's your personal truth, the speaker's personal truth, Okara's personal truth, that's fine.

But you can't just be exclusively one or the other. You know, all the fairytales that we look at have some sort of moral story. We talk about fables a lot of the time, where they have a point. I think the choice to use once upon a time in this particular poem, where we're exploring a relationship, whether it's between a father and a [00:30:00] son, a colonizer and the colonized, it offers interpretation, and it asks you to explore more. So I find that Okara's ability to invite the reader into his world, into this poem, is so magical because it offers such a wide variety of choice. It's not a prescriptive poem, and despite having the commanding voices that we do see in it, you're not being commanded. You're a witness to all of this. So it's a, it's an awful way to leave an episode and say it is uncertain because it's uncertain, and that's how it ought to be.

But I don't think I'd change anything about this poem

Joe: I don't think it's an awful way to end the episode at all. I think it's exactly the kind of, ambiguity that our listeners are gonna take forwards into their own interpretation of the poem. And as always, we wanna hear what you guys have to think.

Comment, like, and drop us an email, or talk on the community pages.. We're always keen to hear what you guys have to say. We really hope you've enjoyed this episode, and that you're enjoying Season Five of the podcast so far. We're only two episodes in, but I'm really, really enjoying making it. I know Maiya is too.

And as always, we make it for you guys, and we wanna hear what you guys think. So if [00:31:00] you are enjoying the podcast, please feel free, to like, review, recommend in all the normal places, and let us know how you're enjoying it and how you're getting on.

Next time we have a big one. Some of you guys may remember a little movie that was released over the summer, Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey. Well, unfortunately, Christopher Nolan is not yet coming on the podcast, although he is of course always welcome. But Maiya and I are delving into the great epic poem by Homer, and I cannot wait to discuss that one with you.

It is gonna be a mammoth episode, hopefully in terms of output and enjoyment rather than Maiya and I's research time. But until then, it is goodbye from me

Maiya: And goodbye from me and the team at PoemAnalysis.com and Poetry+. Until next time