Africa; The Dual Currents of the Despair
Africa; The Dual Currents of the Despair
The ledger of our blood, wide and deep,
Spilled over shifting sand and salted wave,
Where millions walked into a forced sleep,
And history forgot the nameless grave.
Two brutal currents from a single side,
To tear the children from the motherland.
A grim fifteen percent of fathers, mothers,
Left swallowing the dark beneath the sail,
While white-chalked books erased their tribal names.
Ten million souls, un-mourned and unrecorded,
No gravestones mark the place of burials,
Just fifteen percent, ten millions, and their generations today?
The Eastern current turned toward the sun,
Across the Red Sea and the desert track,
Fourteen million, ere the West begun,
Driven on paths from which they looked not back.
From seventh-century dawn to modern years,
The long Trans-Saharan line was tightly drawn,
A silent trade of unrecorded tears,
Spanning the Middle East to India's dawn.
And where are those who survived the Eastern light?
The eunuch’s sorrow in the quiet night,
Where branches withered as the blade was laid,
The heavy price of silent empires paid.
Yet others merged into the stranger's land,
A mother’s blood inside a sultan’s heir,
Absorbed like rain into the desert sand,
Their African inheritance unbowed,
Absorbed until the separate threads were one.
But look where Basra's ancient marshes gleam,
Where Zanj rebellions broke the iron crown,
Or Hormozgan, where through a Zar ritual dream,
The Afro-Iranians pass the spirit down.
Go search the Sindh where Sheedi drums still beat,
Or see the Siddi kings of old Bhavnagar,
Where Malik Ambar marched on royal feet,
To keep the fire of Africa afar.
The ledger counts the cargo and the cost,
The lines of descent scattered by the wind,
But though the names and languages were lost,
Deep within the marrow of the pain,
The pulse of Africa remains the same.
Did you forget they were never just figures,
but raw flesh, fierce desires, and human breath?
Not even the passing of ages can dull the agony.
The marrow holds the truth; it cannot be undone.
The unbroken marrow cannot be rescinded.
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