Africa: A Land Unknown

Africa: A Land unknown
I am enthralled by sonorous chants,
The stamping of excited feet,
As men dance slowly to the rhythm of the wind,
This is Africa, the land of songs and hymns...

Umbape, give me a song to sing;
Let me hear the rolling torrents of our falls,
Let the birds whisper the tune
For this is Africa, the land of songs and hymns...

Across oceans, in chains and in the rain;
In time, when men were enslaved-
When whips struck in pain, we sang!
For this is Africa, the land of songs and hymns...

Across mountains, in mouth locks, and under the sun,
We hummed, no, not for the new marks that toured uncut parts of our bodies
But for the morning that comes after weeping nights
This is Africa, the land of songs and hymns.

Our Identity is not in the colour of our skin,
But the consciousness rooted in a pride that made merry in times others craved for death,
Creativity entrapped in the moulding of emotions into figures of representation,
Stolen away only for amusement behind glasses on a strange shore.

The tales my Grand mother told of the heroes long reconciled to this brown earth we now stand,
Resonate now that I am told I had no History,
It was never written... Orally passed to now aged few,
And lost in the memories these told stories once steadily ran through,
Who shall tell the true tales of the innovative forebears deified as wrathful gods?

O land of the dark ages of sorrow!
the daughter of the most high Western dwarfs,
paddle beyond the ancient black burrow,
and walk beyond the tamed Lords of the Serfs.

The Black became a member of dark humanity,
fed with the ashes of serenity written in history,
in the hands of the Bapus of blood of struggles
that carried her from republic to public till she became a public mess.

Where are our Lumumbas?
Are they hoisted in our vague minds, suppressed by the Mobutus ?
The treacherous brutes deaf to the song of liberation,
Enslaving their kin, dancing to the whip as they are nourished with penury.

Songs sang to praise them who held men preys
Hymns to comfort the kids on the streets whose help is not forthcoming
The songs and hymns just turned awry
Oh, sorry! This is Africa, the land of songs and hymns.

After all is said and done,
Whether we toil from dawn to dusk
Or remain stranded in times confines
We remain Africa, a people unknown; a land undefined; a greatness yet to be birthed.