Explain The Significance Of The Subject Matter In Piano And Drum ByGabriel Okara

NOTE:- This is to aid poetry under Literature-In-English for WASSCE/WAEC, GCE, NECO, MAY/JUNE, NOV/DEC, etc.

QUESTION:- Explain the signifance of the subject matter in Piano And Drum by Gabriel Okara.

ANSWER:-
Piano And Drum by Gabriel Okara is one among many that brought out the beauty of music in poetry and the subject matters of the poem were made to blend with the use of musical effects.
The subject matters are the remembrance of the youthful days and the complex nature of the future to come.

The poet recollected his youthful days (the primal youth and the beginning) through the quietness of the early morning river and the echoing forest while "at the riverside" (his land of youth). He further mentioned in stanza 2,
the effect such remembrance gave
his mem
ory of sitting “in my mother’s lap a suckling”, “walking simple paths with no innovations”, and groping in green leaves with wild flowers in
naked hurrying feet.

The complexity of the future to come according to the stanza 3 of the poem was with “a wailing piano” which symbolised a painful sound “solo speaking of complex ways” (the unknown future) and such painful sound brought a silent cry which the poem referred to as “in tear-furrowed concerto” which lost the poet with labyrinth of it's complexities”.

Adulthood in human life stands between the past and the present which in many occasions bring out the feeling Gabriel Okara felt in the poem "Piano And Drum". Conclusively, any adult, in any given time, can find himself or herself in the shoes of Gabriel Okara which makes the subject matters of the poem to be very much significant.

Samuel C. Enunwa aka samueldpoetry
(the Leo with wings soaring high)