The Sorrow Night Songs [Poetry]

LETTER TO THE GODS

Chanting down the walls of Babylon
From the hills of the watershed,
Stretched from the breathe
Of Kwame Nkrumah to the high soles
Of Thomas Sankara,

Be here but just be there,
Go and come—saying to them,
Come and go,
Chanting,
Be there but here
And here and there.

You are the men who stood at the edge
Of the world,
Here and there,
Willing to fall thousand times,
There and here,
And rise once!
For all that you stood for.
When you were there but here
And here but there.

You showed us sad,
You lost us joy!

You found us new,
You sold us old!

You said,
Quietly you stood!

You never walked alone,
You came here mellowed!

You paid the cost,
The debt, you couldn't!

You ate,
But staved because you ate not!

You became my neighbor
When laboured from dawn to dust!

Your blood spoke black,
Like the feathers of your skin—dark!

You came back,
Unmasked your strength for the freedom of labels—black labels.

You plucked the hairs in your nose,
Used the blood to cement the foundations of this rock,
What we are now not proud of.

Today,
I write not and upright letter to you,
Dear ancestors,
I am the man
I am the land,
I speak to your souls,

If there is a dream,
A dream you want to dream me,
And a poem,
A poem you want to write me,
Or a song
A song you want to recite me,
Chant me down
Till I hear,
Blind me now
Till you come near.
And let me hear it now!

But be fast to come,
Lest,
We sell back this land at a price
We won't bargain for.

For we your children in Africa,
We have lost ourselves,
At the tables you warned us
Not to sit,
And we have believed in the words,
Books you warned us not to read.

Wherever you hear me,
We are still waiting for the
Father Christmas from above.

Whatever you are watching,
Stop and see,
See your very own color
hanging our dirty underpants at the lens of the world,
They are hypocrites turning us against each other.

The holdups we couldn't unhook,
Have slumped us—
‪To turn our smiles into FrowningStorms.‬
And our hopes to fall silent.
And our hopes to fall silent.

Nkrumah we are still trying,
Trying and trying
To emancipate ourselves
From what we have been
Children of a lesser god.