Raped And Ravaged Poem by Erhiawarien Justice Akpesiri

Many long seasons now gone, could recall
Upon our lands and our neighbour’s yon
Here we lived
Saddled in our candid pouch of peace
So long we lived to live even ever on
Upon our bond of peace and strife
But then they came,
In boats so strangely built
Along our shores they came a-roost
With intents none could purely tell:
They came to see how fair could be the ‘black monkeys’ so supposed
And how we could serve in their soup and gravy of such unholy mix
They came for trade they claimed
But there they stole our lives away
Upon the wings of our own greed
They burnt our homes, our humble wealth
We tried a fight
But guns they had and a many trick
So they made us slaves to fill their ships
Their ships in wait off the belt of our waterlines
We were bound in fetters unformed in all tale of servitude before
Our hands
Our feet
Our waists and necks
Raided and raped
We were flogged and raped
Sold by a kin, a king and a chief
Such black and gally grudge of greed
Trade indeed!
And so we were shipped off our lands
From far off our lands, far and far away
We,
Us who could trudge the gruesome path of death
The dark trail of the angry trees
To the land of mourning we sailed
There, where we toiled and sweat and cursed.

We’ve heard of slaves and servitude
Yet none of these had found our ears
Slaving,
Upon the devil’s very mill
There we drudged all life long
Void of hope, a moment smile
‘Mere articles of filthy worth
Who would lend you a mo o’ smile? ’
For so were we in our masters’ sights
And so we died a thousand times, even before we could truly die
The world knew us not, nor a dirge for us sang
Such be the beauty of our death
If beneath our humble black earth
We had been laid to rest in death
Dead a slave, buried free
If twilight could write our tale anew
Oh, such a misery the world to see!
Centuries a-doom and a hunch of a dreadful gloom.
We were raped, I dared to say
Our souls
Our lands
Our fortunes
Our hopes
We were raped,
So badly ravaged
Thanks be my brother, and that stranger-man upon his ship.