Portion - universityofafricanart.org

Both lips of her infant, with fingers pressed intact.
Baby’s voice kept coming, without any faltering
Behind her finger mask, mocking her desperate task
Just as if her fingers, careless of her anger, could not gag her baby, or block her babble.
With divine savvy and countenance heavy, said her baby, with cheeks ruddy:
Salutations to you, wearers of ebon hue, you keepers of golden vigil,
You seekers of guardian angels
You have kept the fire burning, with hot and primal yearning.
You are the light, a timeless delight, to your troubled people, a solver of parables.
At you we gods have gazed, and we are amazed.
With divine attention, and careful deliberation
We have considered your devoted intentions to talk to us, and hear our words
We have heard your questions, we considered your applications
And we have for you an answer, delivered without anger
You will wait no longer, in your pangs of hunger.
It goes without question: makers of steadfast interrogations
Certainly deserve answers, to allay their wonders.
Not all answers are pleasant, not all birds are pheasants.
Some answers questions evoke, even some questions answers provoke
Some questions bring answer that make you desire you posed no question.
These queries you mention, fall under your own shadow, for the response we bestow
Are not serenades and psalms, you seek as balms. Listen hard to these words
For they bind your world. Your future is hatched in hard rocks. Your lives etched with sad
luck
Coming one thousand years, like a stretch of ill fears, will be years of sorrow
Tears and woe. A snail separated from its shell, your people will live in hell
Stolen from their land and exiled to other lands, your princes and priests
Will become common drifts, and other people’s properties, cursed to obey slaving