David Smalling | + Follow Poet |
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Covenant Against Violence

So you march one day, with candles, in black
Held hands, silence stained, in human chain
To protest savage rapes and the gun attack
You make famous, the idiots and the insane

And when the crowd dissolved truth left bare
Mothers went home to hide still a wicked child
The predator hidden from a nation's sad fear
We make each silence time's forest for the wild

And when the crowd dissolves into the thin air 
Of insecurity, the village shivering shrunk away
Before the ugly we wrapped the timid dry tear
In pretty paper of smiles, beseeching for the day

I will not march flattering while truth is defied
In a savage world, I yield innocence to none
Work truth, Justice long delayed is justice denied
Apologies too long, an imposter, has had its run

I want my country back again, very brave! I want
My children laughing, late hours still, in the streets
I want doors opened, like hearts, to hear the chant
Across fences, familiar love where each voice meets

I want the inept, corrupt, law agents purged anew
And this sudden material greed abate and poverty
Like a school teach us fresh what none before knew
How to survive, the culture founded from creativity.

I want to walk at nights fearless on crime free shores
And taste salt without the taint of blood on the winds
I want for love to pour out its treasure that reassures
Poverty is a tragedy only for the timid; here hope begins

O Jamaica, I want you, still happy as you were before
We had friendships deep, and everything no problem
Because we shared. Let us die this good way, endue
Against the beast! Let us rout his demonic strategem

I will not march one day black to placate indifferent men
How can I sleep in peace, victims are multiplied each night!
I cannot look at blood and wear black, to cover it again
The pain stinks here! Who shield rabid fiends from the light? 

I will march yes, march on the grave of crime and graft
I will march yes, march with the coffin of monsters done
And I will wear black again when my skin in sun can laugh
I will wear black when is silent the bellow of the angry gun.

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