Topsy-turvy

It is a topsy-turvy world this
For not the doers that count
Not the men in the arena
Not those faces marred by dust and blood
Not those who walk the path and stumble
Not those who dare the mighty things
Who win the glorious triumphs checked by failure
Not those who spend themselves in worthy causes
Not those who strive valiantly and err
Not those who lie sleepless so we sleep
Not those whose silent sacrifices keep us
Not those who starve to fill us up
Not those who die that we might live
No, the credit belongs not to them
Honour belongs not to whom it is due!

Read - Village Boy Impressions - Walking Backwards

It certainly belongs not to the shoulder shrugs
Those feeble souls that recoil at life
Poor spirits who neither suffer nor enjoy
Cynical in thought and speech
Benjamin the donkey pales in comparison
Who see, hear, and knows but speaks not
When the elephant treads the tale of the mouse.
Who dwell in the grey twilight of tranquillity
Who, fearing the critics, knows but doeth  not
Timid souls that know neither victory nor defeat
For they quit long before they try
They die long before their mortality ends
And are cremated before they are interred.

Read: Village Boy Impressions - Election Mangana

It is a topsy-turvy world this
Here, the glory belongs to the critics
The clanging cymbals and empty barrels
Who point out ways they care not to tread
Who show us how the doers stumble
Who reveal the frailties of the darers
The experts who have never tried
Whose wagging tongues beguile us daily
Whose words freeze the marrow in our bones
Who make their living from pointing fingers
Stopping the trains in their tracks
And quieting the birds in mid-song
They stand impenitent in undignified glory.
It is a topsy-turvy world this!



NOTE

On April 23, 1910, Theodore Roosevelt gave what would become one of the most widely quoted speeches of his career.  The speech was titled “Citizenship in a Republic,” but came to be known among many as “The Man in the Arena.”

In the speech, which was delivered in Paris, Roosevelt railed against cynics who looked down at men who were trying to make the world a better place. “The poorest way to face life is to face it with a sneer,” he said. “A cynical habit of thought and speech, a readiness to criticize work which the critic himself never tries to perform, an intellectual aloofness which will not accept contact with life's realities—all these are marks, not ... of superiority but of weakness.”

The most famous section of his speech run as follows:

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat."

It's over a century since Roosevelt's speech and it seems the world and especially Ghanaians have never even heard it. In this poem, I render the famous section of the speech in the terms in which Ghanaians have taken it in the hope that if the original speech did not move us, perhaps this mutilated version may at least confuse us more.