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Ancestral forebears are you
now content, I ask?
By Dr. Rose Ure Mezu
Are you now content, ancestral
forebears?
You of the liquid poetry, are you truly
content?
Brave sable verbal and physical
warriors,
Tell me, are your hearts now at rest?
Has the Rubicon been effectively
crossed?
Are the collective dreams for which you
fought now fulfilled?
Have we all become one? And are you now
truly content?
Tell me, Toussaint L’Ouverture, Nat
Turner and Denmark Vesey -
You diehard warrior-nationalists with
names whistling in the wind,
Who gave your lives to make Black people
as free as whites
Is this the dream you saw? And are you
at last content with Obama?
Tell me, Booker T. Washington, has
gradualism paid off?
Is the economic base secure enough to
face equality through the vote?
It has taken 113 years from Atlanta
Compromise to this golden Moment
Are you now content, I ask? Is Obama the
answer to your life’s labor?
Marcus Garvey, and pre-Mecca Malcolm X,
Rev. Jeremiah Wright –
You all and such as you drew the line on
the sand
No accommodation, no mixing of the
races, no dilution of Black purity
Are you content with Barack Hussein
Obama, he of the mixed race?
Consistent in his message of sacrifice,
Oneness, Optimism and Hope
Whipping up a post civil rights rainbow
generation into a ball of palpable
enthusiasm;
Are you now content, I ask? Is Obama the
answer to your toil and life’s
sacrifice?
Fred Douglass, Alexander Crummell,
W.E.B.DuBois, Claude McKay of the
African Blood Brotherhood –
word-warriors and fiery ideologues,
Nnamdi Azikiwe, Kwame Nkrumah, Patrice
Lumumba, Nelson Mandela –
Brave nationalists, I ask you, have all
our separate dreams now meshed into one?
Our dreams of equity, justice and
accommodation, have they now made of
Our America a more perfect union? Are we
all now one people, one world?
Martin Luther King, Jr., Fannie Lou
Hamer, James L. Farmer, Rosa Parks
Though dead who yet live on, is Martin’s
“fierce urgency of now” realized?
Because “little black boys and little
black girls” have now joined hands
With “little white boys and little white
girls,” you must be content, Martin!
For surely, today’s table of brotherhood
is measured by the content of character
And colors of skin seem meshed since the
Jew, Caucasian, the African and Asian
Now sit together and can all eat at the
same table; Martin, is this the dreamed
Moment!
-
Wyatt Tee Walker, Jesse Jackson, Harry
Belafonte, Al Sharpton - civil rights
activists,
Maya Angelou, Toni Morrison, and Alice
Walker - wielders of imagination and
word magic,
Chinua Achebe, Soyinka, Ngugi wa
Thiong’O, Okechukwu Mezu –
PanAfricanists, and
Rudy Lewis, Wilson J.Moses, Ishmael
Reed, Rose Mezu, Amin Sharif – living
word warriors
And all you others still living, have we
arrived at that magical “mountain top”
moment,
Passing through the pathway of work and
love to an unending treasury of
opportunities for all?
All ye nationalists - radical, moderate,
conservative – have you coalesced and
morphed
Into this lanky Achiever, and dreamer of
dreams, son of intellectual, adventuring
griots,
Into this youthful Seer and doer of
deeds of measured thinking and soaring
rhetoric
Who inspires people on a basic human
level, who has put power back into we
the peoples’ hands
Such that old people seem dazed that
their improbable dreams have indeed come
true
And the Young can clearly see actual
visions of energy, unity and concrete
freedom.
In Obama, Hope and Optimism are afloat
and yearning hearts soar into flights of
freedom
And joyous fellowship, for people have
become kinder, more patient and more
embracing.
And thus again I ask, is this the
magical Moment of that dreamed
mountaintop?
Is Barack Obama the Joshua to Martin
Luther King, Jr.’s Moses?
Is this the fulfillment of the dreams of
generations long gone and living?
Is the change we want Obama? Have we at
last set foot on the Promised Land?
Are you now content, you ancient and
recently dead, and living African
forebears
That out of the tall savannahs of
Africa, a child of your loins is the
first global Gentleman?
His wife Michelle and Malia and Sasha
now occupy the White House constructed
for others
With the calloused hands and sweat and
blood of enslaved black and brown
forebears?
As America, with a digitalized world,
renews itself, Hope transforms a
“jangling discord”
Of hate into “a beautiful symphony”
played by a man of multicolored
race-tapestry
Who as prophesied by McKay stands
“erect” like a king in state within
America’s walls,
“With not a shred of terror, malice, not a
word of jeer” but with Love for All
Poised to
pilot America to a new era of true
knowing and justice to all unclenched
fists.
This son of a father issuing out of a
far-off hamlet steers all toward a
reaching-out to
Peoples of other climes and tongues with
vision pointed outwards to include in
DuBois’s immortal words, Africa,
China, and India’s strand / where Kenya
and Himalaya
stand and the Nile and Yang-tze roll;
With vision pointed toward the Rising
Sun who rule the night and where Black
is bright
Barack Obama is a town-crier awakening a
sleeping world to honor the sun of
Justice and Truth.
Surely, ancient,
free and enslaved African forebears, at
last, your hearts must be content!
19-20 January 2009 |
