The Father's Plea and the Confessional Tone of Gabriel Okara's Once Upon a Time

The phenomenon poet, Gabriel Okara, in Once Upon a Time, writes a poem in which a father speaks directly and only to his son, and in which the poem's entire moral weight is borne by the address. The speaker does not lecture his child; he confesses to him, admitting that he has himself acquired the empty social habits he laments, and ending with a plea that the son teach him how to be honest again. This confessional tone is unusual in poems about cultural change: most are accusatory, while Okara's is contrite. This essay argues that Okara establishes the confessional tone through his choice of the son as direct addressee, through the speaker's admissions of complicity, through the gentle imagery he uses for the child, and through the closing plea that turns a poem about loss into a poem about repair.

Point — Okara first secures the confessional tone by choosing the son as the only addressee of the poem, which removes any defensive audience the speaker might otherwise have addressed. Evidence — Each stanza ends, "But believe me, son," and "Once upon a time, son," fixing the poem inside a single private conversation. Technique — The poet uses apostrophe and a register of intimate direct address. Explanation — By speaking only to his child, the father strips away the postures he might have used for any other audience; a man cannot perform a public self for the child who has watched him eat breakfast. The address forces honesty as a structural feature of the poem. Link — The choice of addressee therefore prepares the confessional tone: the father has already, by choosing his son, committed himself to a speech he cannot dress up.

Point — The confessional tone is deepened by the speaker's explicit admissions of complicity, in which he names his own contribution to the hollowness he laments. Evidence — He confesses that he has "learned to wear many faces / like dresses — homeface, / officeface, streetface," and that he has learned to say "Goodbye" when he means "Good-riddance." Technique — The poet uses self-indictment and a register of candid catalogue. Explanation — The poem does not blame colonial encounter, urban life or commercial society in the abstract; it blames the speaker himself, and the candour is what gives the lament its moral authority. A father who tells his son, in effect, "I have done these things too," cannot easily be accused of preaching. Link — The admissions therefore advance the confessional tone: the poem stays sincere because the speaker keeps showing the reader his own hands.

Point — Okara sustains the confession through the gentle, careful imagery he uses for the child, which both contrasts with the harsh imagery applied to the speaker himself and softens the poem's register. Evidence — The father describes the son's laughter as showing the older, lost honesty he wishes to relearn, and addresses him simply as "son" rather than by name. Technique — The poet uses tonal contrast and a register of tenderness. Explanation — The gentle imagery prevents the confession from sounding melodramatic; the father is not throwing himself at the child's feet, he is having a quiet evening conversation. The contrast between the harsh self-imagery of masks and the soft imagery of the son's laughter signals that the speaker has not lost the capacity for tenderness, only the daily access to it. Link — The gentle imagery therefore stabilises the tone: confession in this poem is not despair but the careful return of feeling that the father had still been able to direct at his child.

Point — The plea at the end of the poem completes the confessional tone by turning lament into request, and offering the son a role rather than a sermon. Evidence — The father asks, "Show me, son, / how to laugh; show me how / I used to laugh and smile / once upon a time when I was like you." Technique — Okara uses an imperative apostrophe and a register of asked help. Explanation — The reversal of authority is itself the moral act of the poem; the father, who would ordinarily teach, asks to be taught, and that single inversion repairs more than any complaint could. The plea is at once humble and hopeful, because it assumes that what has been lost can still be relearned from a person who has not yet lost it. Link — The closing plea therefore advances the thesis decisively: the poem's confessional tone is not a tone of defeat but the necessary precondition of asking for help.

This study probes to analyse how Okara, through direct address to the son, frank admissions of complicity, contrasting tender imagery and a closing plea that asks rather than lectures, builds a confessional tone that distinguishes this poem from louder laments. The repeated "son," the catalogue of learned faces, the gentleness toward the child and the imperative request together form a poem in which honest self-accounting is itself proposed as the first step toward recovery. The deeper insight is that Okara treats confession not as performance but as method: only the speaker who has admitted his own share in the inauthentic can credibly ask for its repair. Once Upon a Time endures, therefore, in part because the father's voice never raises itself and never excuses itself, and the poem ends with the kind of fragile request that more strident poems can no longer make.