Efe Paul Azino
Let Our Voices Ring
Let Our Voices Ring
Let our voices ring
soft and strong
a million rainbow tongues
pushing our songs through the wind
let our stories dance out in step with the moon
let them boom from hamlets in Soweto
rise through the sprawls of Cairo
straddle the contradictions of Lagos
let them tell of sweat and fear:
of backs bent to carry dreams too heavy for legs to bear
of old men whose visions of the future tether us to the past
let our voices come accompanied by Djembes, talking drums and all that jazz
let our stories speak of sex:
of probing tongues & grinding thighs against the Nairobi heat
of love that rises from the ashes of defeat
in Kigali
tapestries of our humanity
woven into beautiful colors of difference and diversity
this is who we are
children of histories punctuated by conferences
divided by cartographers in Berlin
defended by storytellers in Makarere
united by this struggle to prove, and be
something more than the soft underbelly
of a world perched on the edge of a knife
and it's to these voices we turn, time and again
to remind us that we get past the pain
that we have once chiseled out beauty from mountains of self-doubt
through the dark tunnels of despair these stories will lead us out
in Twi, in Swahili, in Yoruba
whatever the languages of our imaginations
let our voices never stop ringing
let our feet dance up spirits
let our pens conjure the ancient wisdom of the ancestors
excavate memories to find the civilizations we once built
before the barbarians barged through the doors
for we are a people too,
a universe of multiple dreams written into history
written out of war
written to the sound of thunder,
written in lightning
written, by million rainbow voices that never stop ringing