Reparations

A man's first right is to his own country: That place by choice that was his father's hope Before. His breathing make its history, Its death is his shackles, his dream its scope. This was the first discord jarring nature When your hulls scraped the rock, unearthed us And moved us backwards to the dark future. Reparations demand you pay with trust That Atlantic drank millions, you count Them out forgotten still, but the land seared By their absence brings sand from its green fount. So many drums like rain have disappeared, So many mothers and fathers died here Crying, children withered to the dead roots That have no fruit, no beginning to bear. Reparations rage that we are mutes. Here is the account, the sum of the cost: When your industry was young awaken Like a bear made hungry by the white frost - The value of ships underwritten By the idea of men as the first edge; Before gold, or liquid currency rose As security, the insurance pledge For commerce was us; God your credit froze. That lie was the foundation of commerce And all traffic, we were commodity Too, from ship's hull to cotton thrift and hearse; From sugar blues to dead, stark poverty; Out of us your fable babel rose. Ours Then what was built by sweat and tears and blood Our genius gave the marbled towers Our culture now, the condemned trampled mud! Close this account, and pay in full for trust To mend the broken bonds that made us less Than legal men. Reparations is just As God himself, and seek yet no excess But that from taxes in the west we're freed And all our economies too forgiven All debt, and all school and health be decreed Free to our race, and house for our children. We came not willingly, but these lands built By the labor of our hands; this new world Be states of Africa; nor any guilt Be inculcated, and the stolen pearl May know its rightful place again. We are More than mere servants who gave civil means To the world, better still than dust of star This meet for reparation now convenes. ii Reparations is the rights for new Africans Embracing self, and empowered identity Payments for utility and tribulations Acceptance of our recovered humanity Race and divisions subsides in perfidy Africa's children worldwide love merchants again Trafficking grace to heal the slanted infamy Inviting you too meet us for ransome from pain Overdue, this account must be paid: no taxation No charge for health, debts of state, nor education. Slaves no more! Let the shackles fall as evidence.