A Poem I Wrote Standing Up-Indictment by Blessing Musariri

We are proud to be Africans on distant shores,
learning ancient tongues, fighting for their survival,
while forgetting our own.
We adopt new inflections
and sing-song ways of speaking
to camouflage our origins,
hiding from the tainted brush.
We are the new Celts – darker, more robust.
We sanction our memories of sun and hunger
and hopeful hopelessness.
We unlearn our songs and disappear through our children –
the pristine generation, unmarked by unpopular citizenry.
We are not proud. We are not Africans.


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