I come from a place,
Where tribe rules not human race,
Fights between regions,
Judgements based on religions.
What is a nation with paper democracy?
A torn people, shredded bureaucracy.
We were always lured by change,
Too blinded to see the chains,
Now, we’ve seen blood like a river,
Wounds unhealed even cut deeper.
But we dare to hope, this once together,
Repudiating leaders who toss around power,
Burning the bridges that kept us apart,
Creating scripts, penning down our acts,
Now being the best days for history,
We fight to create a finer story.
To make the way we lacked for the future,
Our differences and wounds, we suture.
Let the pause linger,
Voices may seem to wither,
Yet deafening beneath the silence,
Failures trashed, now we decide,
‘Cause if democracy isn’t given,
Then it must be taken.
Read – The Old Song – A Poem by Margaret Edum Chi, Cameroon
