Echoes Of An African Tear: A Poet's Lament Poem by Onalethuso Petruss Ntema

Echoes Of An African Tear: A Poet's Lament



ECHOES OF AN AFRICAN TEAR: a Poet's Lament

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?
And 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, do 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.

Onalethuso Petruss Ntema
- The Voice of a Shadow,2016
www.soulseedsntema.blogspot.com

Echoes Of An African Tear: A Poet's Lament
COMMENTS OF THE POEM
Kelly Kurt 17 April 2015

Thank you for sharing this, Onalethuso. Equality and brotherhood should be the world's priority

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Veeraiyah Subbulakshmi 17 April 2015

it is too strange why we, the colored 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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