Featured Poem: Cry No More Child

Featured Poem: Cry No More Child - Martins Deep

CRY NO MORE CHILD

"You were born after rain" you were told

by the grown ups that buried your umbilical cord

Pointing you to a group of plantain trees in the backyard.

This is your birth story

Cradled safely in her arms

She baptised you

In the Jordan of her tears

Whilst the priest watched on vainly with holy water

At the throes of mother.

Moonless night and dateless it was

Life was sorry for such tragic role

In the scripts you were called to play

by the thunders that rumbled

And the night birds that mourned.

You grew gracefully like palm fronds.

Measured your height with the tall bamboo standing on your toes.

Your fingers turned green from keeping cassava plantations.

Life kissed hard your cracked lips

That bled juju lyric

For the spirited drummers in your chest.

Songs themed with courage and hope as you paddled on the limpopo

With savoury tales for whoever cared to listen.

Your tattered clothe on colt back

Saddled by hunger riding triumphantly through your veins into the caves of your mahogany eyes.

The white of your teeth

That rivals the silver moon

When her smile shreds her veil.

Your fart like the smoking chimneys of oil refineries

When you return from the stream at eve

Water pot balanced on your head

As you sing like you fetched the sun into it.

How Africa fondles the soles of your feet with the tuft of her grasslands!

She tries your feet with the heat of the sahara sands

But it was Africa, jealous mother

Preparing you to stand before kings, little one.

Your charm amulets jingling like the tambourine

chasing the fear of dawn away.

Eyelids like the strings of the kora

strumming your doubtful heart into rest

like a poised hunter whose kill within rage is sure.

It is the way you danced alone when your seine was heavy with bounties from Oshun

Its your laughter after acts of mischief

Hope is the way you squat by the fireside scribbling on the earth all the papers that owe you praise songs while you wait for the soup to cook.

Strength was in the way you swam against the raging

tide of the River Ethiope first light to the other side to gather snails for the market.

Survival was your canoe floating from the horizon of the Argungu River

Without paddles

The waves leading you home

Where no one missed you.

Bravery is in the way you pout

chasing the leopard with a rod among your cattle with the Maasai chant half-understood.

Cry no more beside the giant anthill with your shattered water pot mocking your faith.

Cry no more,

For mother's prayer echoes

Remaking, weaving paths.

Searching in the forbidden heights

For a crown

That befits your scarred brow.

A god in mud garment

As time washes you into the

Awe that left mother breathless

And the earth, as you tell this story.

-Martins Deep

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