Ode to *Sengbe
Pieh
(By Tariku Abas Etenesh)
Just the other day,
I was walking by the shore lines of
*Mende,
Where I looked foot prints on the
sand,
Not disturbed by the ebbs and tides,
Nor washed by the winds;
Wondering how it remained,
By sea or land breeze undisturbed;
I looked around in search of any
wise mind,
With the knowledge of the ‘why’ and
‘how’
Of the feet that pressed the marks
so deep and hard,
“Whose foot prints are these?” I
asked,
For which, I got a reply from a
teacher of some kind,
“Never knew or cared to; must be some one’s,
But why worry yourself with the past,
any way?”
Then the teacher walked away.
Stunned by the futility of the
reply,
For the answer, along the trace did
I stay;
Only at night when the moon joined
the ebbs,
In what looked an eternal whisper
of serenity,
Composed in the rhymes of the tides
and the sands,
The moon looked down on me with
a smile,
And said “I can tell you the story of
this foot that stands
witness for millions of its kinds,
I said: “tell me please,”
For which: “It is your brother’s,” she
replied.
“A brother unknown to me, and not
heard of from family?” I wondered;
“Yes,” said the moon and went on:
I was one, who witnessed it all,
Nine score- winters have
passed,
Since humanity's lucid bell,
Had started to weep and yell,
On the outrages that ruled here in
Mende,
And the shore lines of Africa and her soul:
Where savagery of the ‘civilized world’
Unleashed its cruelties and heinous
fad,
Blinded in shrouds of religion and
race-pride;
To justify injustice and sanctify decadence,
Nine scores moon-cycles have
passed,
Since ‘the civilized world’,
In culpable serenity and
graciousness sold:
Enlightenments of shackles,
Religion of servitude, and
Brotherhood of color-dipped spilled
blood,
He was a proud-free-soul turned
prey;
By the ‘civilized world’s’ enlightened
savagery;
Sengbe was his name, you brother,
Free man with free spirits with no
will to comply,
To the ‘savagery of the civilized’
When his flesh was shackled,
And had every reason to cry,
And his bare foot traces to
install,
Then was when he wrote in the sands
This story and eternity to tell;
When men of knowledge and riches,
Corrupted history to the seams,
And took the pen of humanity in
their hands,
And justified cruelty “on others”
It was back then,
Before many *winters,
Between you and him appeared,
Many *markets wide waters,
To a land of no tales, laughers, beads or flute
Herding goats or going for hunt,
To a land of shackles and toil in the wilderness,
It was then – you and Him
Made to live afar,
An’
each other miss.
But
your brother, Sengbe,
Had no will to comply
His
free soul and body
To
the ‘savagery of the civilized’
When
his flesh was shackled,
And
had every reason to cry,
Honored his dignity, paying the
price high;
Oh my brother then I wept,
Quested
the moon to be my courier,
To
end the long night,
And
call my brother
Hence
could dawn up on us,
The
sun of togetherness,
My
letter reads:
Of
the Crescent
The
darkest half, behold,
Not forever gets unobserved
For your outcries and “*Lomboko’s” memory it still
holds,
With her dark spots and mysteries,
The full moon will one day reveal,
To bring to light the darkness;
Imposed on history and its actors
Of the myriads of ‘justified injustices’
As it ruled here in Mende,
And all the shore lines of Africa and her soul;
The moon then smiled and said:
Healing the pain of the past,
Starts by knowing it first
And deciphering the millions of footprints,
On African shore line sands;
And I looked, this time curious,
for I had seen only one trace;
for I had seen only one trace;
The moon was right
The sands were filled with footprints;
of Sengbe and million of my brothers and sisters.
--------------
Mende:
a village in West Africa, which during the Trans Atlantic Slave Trade was a
deportation point of many slaves from which a brave African called Sengbe
Pieh was captured to be sent off to the “New World” through a ship called Tekoroup
to Cuba and then transferred to a ship La Amsted .He in the course had
managed to free his fellow friends by killing the enslavers
Lomboko:
A slave fortress from where millions of Africans were deported for
slavery of which Sengbe was one.
Winters:
Many African tribes count time (in a year) taking
winter as reference.
