For my country-folk: I’m proud of you

June 26, 2009 by Chief K.Masimba Biriwasha ·
Filed under: Books & literature, Poetry

For all of you who yearned for freedom
Even when God seemed to have forgotten our basket case
I’m proud of you
For enduring ceaseless pain and deferred dreams
For running deep into the darkness in search of being
For the smiles and laughter
That bloomed under torture like flame-lilies
For singing freedom’s chorus in tyranny’s face
Even though you were whipped till you bled & stamped with
Black boots and beaten by fanged boys in green camouflage
I’m proud of you
For keeping your head up
For being true to the blood of our martyrs
For refusing to be put in chains coated with silver rhetoric of past gains
For shunning hate
For dreaming your dreams. For struggling.
For falling and rising up again like the Sun.
I’m proud of you.
For the fight: the fight to be free.
To be as free as the smoke that thunders.
Even though you ran and crossed rivers and highlands
And walked on top of crocodiles
You held onto your eternal flame
And fanned it with the innocence of a child.
I’m proud of you.
For carrying your stillborn dreams
And toiling under the sun for a harvest of thorns
For staying in a house of hunger yet standing tall
And being spat at by a world that laughed at your scarecrows
For the nights that you spent curled up in a 1963 prison being stung by blood-loving lice all because you asked to be free
For the tears
For eating nails for want of food
For your prayers
For grabbing your ovaries afraid of that seed born in a dry season
For being strong
For breaking down
For the love
For the struggle
Through it all, your eyes opened
And your soul widened
I’m proud
For your story will be told
Till your garden bloom with freedom again.