1.
Her back tiered with collections of scars, each one a poem to recite;
With swollen feet, she bent to grind our sorrows and season our joy.
Iron speaks through her veins — a sight that stirs our tears.
O Mother Africa, your intentional love is a song I know by heart.
2.
She resurges before the sun resumes — a trailblazer at dawn.
Her warmth breathes a will of its own, hands worn yet tender.
She brushes away the fragile burden from her offspring;
O Mother Africa, your intentional love is a song I know by heart.
3.
They thought, alas, she would one day walk bare upon the threshold of their markets.
But who would let these ones know? Motherhood bears its own brief madness.
In her fleeting madness, Africa exercises its immortality.
O Mother Africa, your intentional love is a song I know by heart.
4.
Her voice gathers silence and silences the unsilenced.
She who sways to the rhythm of her resilience,
Every backstroke, a harbinger of what tomorrow brings.
O Mother Africa, your intentional love is a song I know by heart.
5.
Her diary drains her tears, but restores them as rivers of a brighter reality.
We live because she stabbed death – right where it hurts.
She taught me to fly, told me with affection: “Send them to me if they lack manners.”
O Mother Africa, your intentional love is a song I know by heart.
