Echoes of an African Tear: a Poet’s
Lament[1]
I imagine an innocent child;
Waking up to the wave of xenophobic violence too near
than far,
When nightmares behold blood, sweat and tears;
And I hear that Africa’s sons and daughters live in
fear;
But I fear that our end is near,
For blood is thicker than water my dear;
And the sadness in me descends without cause,
As days became too short for peace beneath spoken
words;
As tongues of tonnes of tones called for each other’s
blood;
And painted walls with slogans of war against one
another,
Behold South Africa—the rainbow nation;
Of dozens and masses of mankind and creation,
How could you enslave your own brethren with chains
and shackles?
When your country men found refuge in our huts and
back yards;
In the night of your history, were they kind not
enough…
For their descendants to suffer at the hands of your
angry men?
When will the long
walk to freedom begin, if Africa is not free anymore?
When will we forgive to forget the unknown, if
Azania stands alone?
For no people is an island—their songs untold and voices
unknown,
Why does the African
dream shutter(ed) before the sun could rise?
Africa of proud warriors and abundant miles but
echoes of crying times,
Why have we summoned our souls to the extremes?
And what good do we teach and preach, if tomorrow
may bring?
What rule do we seek and dig deeper, when sorrow to
our dreams?
What justice do we mean, when swallows prey on
innocent victims?
Is it an act of prejudice? Or just mere ignorance for
our social systems?
Have political norms derailed Africa to forbid her
helpless child?
I
quote from the war poet Wilfred Owen’s Mental Case poem;
‘These are men whose minds the dead have ravished’…
And I wonder who should unearth the African ancestry;
When
the future is a wreath strewn with thorns of
historical hatred,
What would our children do to their countrymen and
women?
And what will they do to them? Will they shrink or
frown at them?
Who shall care for the child in the gutters of
sacred bodies of the dead?
Are we foreign in the land of Mother Nature? Or
scared?
Are we? But why do we fight and turn our hearts red
instead?
When do we unite and stand? Or entice our coffins
red?
When an eye for another buries dead? Our
mouths clad?
Or
clouds blurred on the banks of distant rivers as lives lost to the edge?
I
cannot blame the Creator, nor angry brethren, leaders either,
For
life is a teacher for us to look deeper as we drown in ashes thicker…
17042015-0305
A poem in memory of the gone. It is a social commentary against hatred and conflicts in Africa's South Africa Republic. It laments the
deteriorating (if not challenging the) socio-political and economic systems
that have engulfed contemporary African societies. It narrows its emphasis on
unity and oneBlood. We are all descendants of the Creator.
[1] Veeraiyah Subbulakshmi’s comment on PoemHunter.com: ‘It is too strange why
we. The coloured people of the world have not learned the wild tactics of those
colonial masters. We have to agree that we are very ignorant and our IQ is
abysmal. Do we want someone to come and teach us how to differentiate? Thank
you for sharing your thought…’
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