Marcus Garvey (From Pages)

Walk here with me Along a strand of island in the sea Let your heart drink like a leaf From this mighty river That shaped the world's relief Listen to his name Hear echoes of white colonial history The burden of shame Edging the teeth of fame Chew it down to the middle bone Feel the tension rise it Like pimento fragrance preserving the night Of Egyptian slime pits And the prince denouncing privilege and place Not so, not so here For him who took up the cudgel of our race The farmers boy Built brick by brick from a builder's dream This native scion ... out of the Maroon's citadel This bewitching monument of St. Ann. Ah Booker did you know A man with bigger head for a mightier dream From Panama to Ecuador From Costa Rica to Brazil Did your heart like a drum pound Boom, boom, baba boom When he clenched the lock of Africa's door When every pulpit in the street Became a university of our history And freedom in every African child Was Marcus Mosiah Garvey Booker, did you see his kingdom His black institutions Like a galaxy dreamers could touch His ships On which the brothermen still wait Like an armada sailing From rubber baron shores To pyramid pinnacle They were his Icarus And he our Daedalus That could not shake the minotaur But, Booker, did he not say To look for him in the wind So now you know why I never sleep again His footprints are still here Clear as the foment of nineteen thirty eight This is where he carved his name Not just on the printers page But on the honor of all the age Making us dream of civil rights And human rights And Rastafarian flight And reparation for our plight And above all he taught me A little black face lover of his fight Never to bow My mind to the whore's tradition Never to yield my soul For I am a nobler structure that my rank here I am the prince they striped bare The Moses that have not see my red sea yet The child still Enthralled with the splendor of every sunset