Arise Africa!
The land of my birth
Awake from your slumber!
For the light is dawn.

Unbound from your hands and feet,
The shackles that have long held your dawn
Sing no more the lost rhymes of the night,
And embrace the rhythms of the glaring morn.

It is time to blame no more the Rhine and Severn that flowed into your Nile;
It is rather time to merge the depths of your Nile to your Niger,
It is time to blame no more the marked paths of the stars;
It is rather time to mark its paths with the soles of your feet.

Look no more to the far-off coasts in hope for a promised “Judastic kiss”,
For its flames will eternally char your core
Embrace rather your once branded hugs that lie within,
And fill the cosmos with the warmth of your pure passion.

Arise! O brave Knights of the land of the rising Sun,
Raise your banners! O chariots of Zulu’s cavalry,

Like the flames of Okuruwo, may your zeal ever glow, O Sons of Herero,
And may your chants of rediscovery reverberate atop Mount Kilimanjaro, O Mother Africa.

Raise your goblets! Ye fruits of the Nile and the Niger
And drink from the sweet fount of Ujamaa,
For then, will the blessings of your Chis’ be outpoured
And the once lost glories, be returned back to your now pallid chests.

 

 

Photo by Darina Belonogova from Pexels