A Letter To My Ancestors Poem by Ofentse Mercy Hajane

Looking sharply at the setting sun.
The reddish yellow color brimming of diversity.
The rock I turned into my throne,
Urgently eroding away into mystery.
The rising crescent moon telling me stories,
of how my ancestors would gaze upon it and mutter secrets of life.
The stars accompanying it sang glories to the African arrows.
The ancestors waging magnificent magic of creation.
Death was their bewildered dog.
It would hunt out and rips soul of evil from the land of the children of the ground.
My mind went back.
Down the ages when rocks were still mud.
Gods from the sky would fall upon our world.
Demanding praises,
But fierce warriors of muddy flesh grew dark wings and took out to sky,
And sought to touch the ground no more for any god,
let alone bow to any.
They would loudly sing 'Afo-rui-ka the beginning
Afo-rui-ka the home of man.
Afo-rui-ka the heart of mother Earth'.
'Afo-rui-ka the alternating womb'.
Unpleasant and defeated the Gods would depart with their chariot.
The mighty warriors have won.
They stood with their feet and bowed not to any god.
But how could they,
when they themselves are gods...
The years traveled
Time soared through the sky like an arrow.
Then came man of fair skin.
He learnt the tricks and sciences of his Afo-rui-ka.
But it wasn't enough,
he wanted more.
He wanted them to pledge to a god he has never behold himself.
By the millions they would exterminate.
By the thousands they would purge as slaves.
And by the hundreds they would put in a prison...
A prison of mind.
One that stood two hundred years after liberation has swallowed all...
I fixed my glance upon the horizon again.
The Crescent moon steadily smiling,
Shining and shimmering.
The stars dancing.
The truth is out.
It was never their fault.
After such ages that they had searched for a home.
Now they found one.
One untainted by the filth of believe.
One that pledge not to any omnipotent destructive god.
They were back home.
Now they wanted to relinquish all the sweet smell of freedom from those who have had it,
for millions of years...
They too were in a prison they have longed to escape,
but all they manage was to defile the very freedom they seek.
It was not by their own doing.
But by the doing of a dream they thought it existed not.
They came calling it by many names.
'Utopia',
they would bellow.
To us it was known by only one name...'Afo-rui-ka'.
'But sire Utopia is but a myth'.
They would spit upon their kings.
But as it was foretold by those who gave birth to them.
They too will one day rediscover Utopia.
The mother of all lands,
The mother of all that is and is to come...
But I sit here today.
Wondering.
What happened to our Utopia?
Did it crumble along with those unsoiled?
Did it perished with those gunned down as games?
Or has it yet to come...
If Utopia is no more,
where would the other side be?


O.M Hajane