by Emmanuel Adegbite
There are poems one reads once and moves on from, and there are poems that refuse to leave you alone. They return to you in moments of disappointment, in conversations that feel strangely artificial, in friendships whose sincerity you begin to question, and even in the theatre of politics where smiles and handshakes often conceal more than they reveal. Gabriel Okara’s Once Upon a Time is one of those poems. I have found myself reading it over and over again, not because its language is inaccessible, but because its simplicity carries an uncomfortable depth. Every time I return to it, I find another part of our society staring back at me. The poem is ostensibly a father speaking to his son about how people have changed, but beneath that simple conversation lies a profound meditation on hypocrisy, deception, materialism, tribalism, social conditioning and the gradual loss of human sincerity.
Okara begins with a memory of a better past. The father tells his son that there was a time when people “used to laugh with their hearts / and laugh with their eyes.” That distinction between laughing with the heart and laughing merely with the mouth is central to the poem. The father is not talking about laughter as a physical act; he is talking about authenticity. There was once a correspondence between what people felt and what they expressed. A smile meant something. A handshake carried warmth. An invitation suggested genuine hospitality. Human relationships were not entirely free of imperfections, but there was still an expectation that the outward expression of affection should have some connection with the inward feeling.
That world, according to the father, has disappeared. People still laugh, but they no longer laugh with their hearts. Their mouths perform happiness while their eyes remain cold and suspicious. The image of the “ice-block-cold eyes” is particularly striking because Okara places the artificial laughter against a physical expression of emotional distance. The mouth says one thing, but the eyes reveal another. The smile becomes a mask. It is a brilliant representation of a society in which appearances have become more important than sincerity and where people have learned to perform emotions they no longer genuinely feel.
One does not have to look very far to recognise this world. We live in an age of carefully constructed appearances. People smile for photographs even when there is resentment behind the smile. They publicly congratulate people they privately envy. They call people friends while secretly competing against them. They embrace people at social gatherings and later become the first to ridicule them when they leave. We have become remarkably good at producing the appearance of affection without necessarily possessing the affection itself. In such a society, the smile can no longer be taken at face value because we have learned that teeth can smile while the heart remains completely unmoved.
The poem becomes even more revealing when Okara turns to the handshake. There was a time, the father recalls, when people “used to shake hands with their hearts.” The expression suggests that human contact once represented something deeper than physical contact. A handshake could communicate trust, fellowship and mutual respect. But that has changed. People now shake hands without their hearts while their “left hands” search the speaker’s “empty pockets.” The image is humorous on the surface, but it carries a sharp criticism of materialism and opportunism. The handshake remains, but its meaning has been corrupted by self-interest.
This is one of the most recognisable features of modern relationships. People sometimes approach others not because they value them as human beings but because of what they can obtain from them. A person may be respected because he has money, influence, political connections, social status or access to opportunities. Once those advantages disappear, the attention often disappears with them. Some relationships survive only as long as there is something to gain. The moment the pockets become empty, the handshake becomes unnecessary. Okara therefore exposes a society in which human worth is increasingly measured by utility.
His treatment of hospitality makes the same point from another angle. The father remembers being told, “Feel at home! Come again.” Yet when he actually takes the invitation seriously, the warmth disappears. He can come once and perhaps twice, but there will be no third time because the doors will be shut. The irony is unmistakable. Society teaches us the language of hospitality even when our hearts are not prepared to practise it. We invite people because invitation is considered polite. We tell them to return because that is what good manners demand. But sometimes we secretly hope they will never take us seriously.
This habit extends far beyond physical hospitality. We have developed a culture of empty expressions. “Call me anytime” can sometimes mean “please do not call me.” “We should see more often” can mean “I am only being polite.” “I am always here for you” can disappear the moment genuine sacrifice is required. We say “Glad to meet you” without being glad and “It has been nice talking to you” after being thoroughly bored. Okara understands that deception does not always appear as an obvious lie. Sometimes it comes disguised as politeness.
But the poem does something even more profound. It refuses to make the father a completely innocent observer of this corrupted world. After complaining about the artificiality of other people, he confesses that he too has learned their ways. He has learned to “wear many faces / like dresses.” This is perhaps the most psychologically important part of the poem because it shifts the discussion from society to the individual. The father is not merely describing what people have become; he is admitting what society has made him become.
The different “faces” he mentions—homeface, officeface, streetface, hostface and cocktailface—represent the different identities people construct to survive different social environments. To some extent, everyone adjusts his behaviour according to circumstances. We cannot behave exactly the same way in a classroom, a family meeting, a formal office and a social gathering. The problem Okara identifies is not ordinary social adaptation. It is the point at which adaptation becomes dishonesty, when the face we present to the world becomes so different from the person within that we eventually lose touch with our authentic selves.
That loss of authenticity is visible everywhere. There are people who speak differently depending on who is listening. They have one opinion in private and another in public. They condemn a behaviour when it is committed by someone they dislike but celebrate it when it is committed by an ally. They become champions of morality when morality favours them and suddenly discover excuses when their interests are threatened. Their principles are therefore not principles at all; they are positions adjusted to suit the moment.
This is where Okara’s poem becomes particularly relevant to the question of tribalism. Tribalism does not always come with open insults or violent declarations. Sometimes it operates quietly through selective sympathy and selective outrage. We can condemn injustice passionately when the victim belongs to our group, yet become strangely silent when the victim belongs to another. We can defend an individual simply because he shares our ethnic identity, while demanding the harshest punishment for someone from another group who has committed the same offence. We begin to confuse belonging with righteousness.
The danger of this mentality is that it destroys the moral independence of the individual. Once we decide that our tribe must always be defended, we no longer ask whether the person representing the tribe is right or wrong. We ask only whether he belongs to us. A criminal becomes “our son.” A corrupt official becomes “our own.” A violent supporter becomes a “defender of the people.” Meanwhile, the same behaviour committed by someone outside our group becomes evidence of the wickedness of an entire community. At that point, morality has been replaced by identity.
Religion, social class and political affiliation can produce the same problem. We often judge people not by the content of their character but by the group to which they belong. We listen differently when the speaker is one of “us.” We interpret the same statement differently depending on who made it. We forgive our own people more easily than we forgive others. And because everyone is doing the same thing, hypocrisy gradually becomes normal.
This is also why Once Upon a Time is an extraordinarily relevant poem for understanding contemporary politics. Politics is perhaps one of the greatest stages on which human beings wear different faces. During election campaigns, politicians can present themselves as the fiercest opponents. They exchange accusations, question one another’s competence and portray their opponents as threats to the future of the people. Their supporters absorb this hostility and sometimes turn it into personal hatred. Friendships are broken, families argue and communities become divided over political contests.
Yet after the election, the same political actors may suddenly discover that they are brothers, friends and colleagues. They shake hands. They embrace. They attend the same functions. They exchange congratulations. They sit at the same tables. The hostility that their supporters treated as a matter of life and death can suddenly become yesterday’s political theatre. Meanwhile, ordinary citizens who took the political battle personally are left to repair the relationships that political rhetoric damaged.
There is something deeply revealing about this. Political elites often understand that politics is about interests, negotiation and shifting alliances, while ordinary citizens sometimes turn political competition into an extension of their personal identity. The politician can campaign fiercely against another politician today and negotiate with him tomorrow. The supporter, however, may continue carrying the anger long after the politicians have moved on. The irony is painful: people who may eventually reconcile at the political level encourage their followers to remain permanently divided at the social level.
Okara’s imagery of the handshake therefore acquires a political meaning. The political handshake can be genuine, but it can also be symbolic theatre. A politician can shake an opponent’s hand for the cameras while pursuing a completely different interest behind the scenes. Two politicians can exchange warm public greetings while their supporters are being mobilised against one another. The handshake may communicate reconciliation, but it may also communicate strategy. As in Okara’s poem, the question is not whether the hands touch; it is whether the hearts are present.
Political language itself is filled with the kind of artificial expressions Okara describes. Politicians call one another “my brother” today and “the enemy of the people” tomorrow. They condemn political defections when they lose a member and celebrate them as acts of courage when they gain one. They describe their own compromises as wisdom and their opponents’ compromises as betrayal. They call their own supporters patriots and opponents’ supporters troublemakers. The vocabulary changes according to political convenience.
The ordinary citizen often participates in this deception without recognising it. We defend our preferred politicians regardless of what they do. We excuse conduct that we would condemn if committed by an opponent. We change our standards depending on who benefits from an action. When our politician makes a mistake, we search for explanations. When another politician makes the same mistake, we demand accountability. In this way, political loyalty gradually becomes a substitute for conscience.
This is perhaps the most dangerous lesson we can draw from Okara’s poem. Society does not merely produce hypocrites; it teaches ordinary people how to become hypocrites. The father did not begin his life wanting to wear different faces. He learned it. He learned how to laugh without feeling joy. He learned how to shake hands without affection. He learned how to say words that contradicted his feelings. In other words, hypocrisy became a survival skill.
And once hypocrisy becomes a survival skill, sincerity begins to look like weakness.
The person who speaks honestly is called rude. The person who refuses to flatter is called arrogant. The person who criticises his own group is called a traitor. The person who refuses to support wrongdoing because it was committed by “his people” is accused of betrayal. Meanwhile, the person who tells everyone what they want to hear is celebrated as diplomatic. Slowly, society rewards performance and punishes authenticity.
That is why the final movement of the poem is so moving. After describing everything he has learned, the father confesses that he wants to return to who he once was. He wants to “unlearn all these muting things.” He wants to recover the capacity for genuine laughter. Looking into the mirror, however, he sees only his teeth, “like a snake’s bare fangs.” The mirror becomes a symbol of self-confrontation. The father is finally forced to see what society has made him.
His appeal to his son is therefore not merely sentimental. It is an admission of defeat and, at the same time, a desire for redemption. The adult turns to the younger generation because he believes the child still possesses something that he has lost. The child has not yet mastered the complicated art of pretending. He has not yet learned all the social masks. He can still laugh without calculating who is watching.
That ending leaves us with a question that is uncomfortable precisely because it is personal: What has society taught us to become?
How many masks have we acquired? How often do we defend people because they belong to our tribe rather than because they are right? How often do we condemn others because they belong to another political camp? How often do we smile at people we do not like, praise people we do not respect and maintain relationships only because they are useful? How often have we sacrificed sincerity for acceptance?
Perhaps the greatest relevance of Once Upon a Time is that it does not permit us to place the blame entirely on politicians, tribalists, hypocrites or society. The father eventually discovers that he has become part of the world he criticises. The poem therefore turns the mirror towards the reader. It asks us not merely to identify the hypocrisy around us but to examine the hypocrisy within us.
In a country where politics can easily become tribal, where identity can become more important than justice and where public relationships can conceal private interests, Okara’s poem deserves to be read again and again. It reminds us that democracy cannot survive on political slogans alone. It requires citizens capable of thinking beyond tribe and party. It requires the courage to call wrongdoing by its name regardless of who committed it. It requires us to understand that supporting a person does not require surrendering our conscience to him.
Most importantly, it reminds us that human relationships should be more than transactions. A handshake should mean something. An invitation should carry sincerity. A smile should come from somewhere deeper than the mouth. Friendship should not disappear when the pockets become empty. Political disagreement should not require hatred. Tribal identity should not require the dehumanisation of another tribe.
Gabriel Okara wrote Once Upon a Time as a conversation between a father and his son, but the conversation has grown far beyond the family. It is now a conversation between generations, between society and the individual, between the person we once were and the person we have gradually become. The father wants his son to teach him how to laugh again because he has discovered that the world taught him almost everything except how to remain genuinely human.
And perhaps that is where the poem speaks most powerfully to our present condition.
We have learned how to speak the language of unity while practising division. We have learned how to celebrate democracy while defending partisan injustice. We have learned how to preach brotherhood while practising tribalism. We have learned how to smile while carrying resentment. We have learned how to shake hands while calculating what we can gain.
We have learned, in Okara’s unforgettable image, to laugh with our teeth.
The real challenge before us is to learn how to laugh with our hearts again.
