MUTED DRUMS!

A friend of mine, Annie recently shared with me an Afro-politically-conscious song I found extremely inspirational. It inspired me to scribble a poem as I listened to it and I wrote the poem below. I think it reads better in its original two-column fomat and I did not go back to edit it because it has an honesty about it I did not want to tamper with yet. What do you get from it?

***

WHAT IS MY REVOLUTION?

We were taught, sometimes in a very
positive way, to despise ourselves and
our ways of life. We were made to
believe that we had no past to speak of,
no history to boast of.

Khama. Mandela.
I speak your names for your spirit
marches inside me.
Ke leungo la tiro ya diatla tsa lona:
I am the fruit of your revolution

It should now be our intention to try to
retrieve what we can of our past. We
should write our own history books to
prove that we did have a past…a nation
without a past is a lost nation, and a
people without a past is a people
without a soul.

Khama, I saw a drum today.
I literally saw a djembe head that had
been slashed with something sharp,
What use is it now?

And what use are my words if
my poem, devoid of craft, fails to
convey the tragedy of a mute drum?

What use am I, impounded in
these foreign mountains to beg and sigh?

We have known ironies, insults, blows
that we endured morning, noon, and
evening…

Who will forget that to a black one said
“tu”, certainly not as to a friend, but
because the more honorable “vous” was
reserved for whites alone?

Who will forget that to a black one [says]
“tu”, certainly not as to a friend, but
because the more honorable “vous” [is]
reserved for whites alone?

Lumumba. Nkrumah.
In the sound of your names I hear drums
that would not be muted by blood and
fire. Though your drums played loudly,
You fathers did not warn me.

…equal opportunities. It is an ideal
which I hope to live for and to achieve.
But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I
am prepared to die.

Mandela, remind me.
Something, bite me; ruffle me.
Something! Shake off this
cancer consuming my capacities

Sound of drums, wake me up to a
revolution.

The emergence of such a mighty
stabilizing force in this strife-worn
world..[it] should be regarded not as the
shadowy dream of a visionary, but as
practical proposition, which the peoples
of Africa can, and should, translate into reality.
Tomorrow may be too late and the
opportunity will have passed, and with it
the hope of free Africa’s survival.


Nkrumah, I saw a mute drum today.