The Mission

Let us write from dusk till dawn our grief upon a page Let us cry for young loves gone like birds from a cage We who are the social conscience of the world, a wage Still due must now be paid ... this is the laureate's rage And not the sorcery of praise. Poets feel keenly truths That other mortals dare not see, and face living brutes The sword too frail to kill, O great griots find your roots The thunder behind us is the marching of deadly boots. Let us pluck the lie from history's eye, and stand alone To tell ... how love in one mortal blood for sins atone When the ground around him shook and swell. No throne Must miss the scathing scan of mad Medussa's stone, We are the army of the weak, the people's final voice Our genius is our gift, our gallant service is our choice, Let us unfold the scroll of evil strategy laden with vice Let us as poets pen for penitence and let the heart rejoice.