Our Heritage Poem by Tony Adah

They bought the land
Bought the water
And bought the air above
They took all from us
That heritage that jumped
From generation generation.

Pushed to the fringes,
Our stilted houses stand
Squalid and in despair
Down where our filth float like
Reed boats upon water,
Life freely lived is gone.

Back in the land
Towering buildings take the
Place of trees
And from their nostrils spew fumes
Like a crater gone haywire
The air sniffing the fumes
And passing them to own nostrils
Our chests will whizz
So breathless and painful
We will die
In that heritage where our
Umbilical cords were buried
And all our livelihoods vitiated.