Travail Poem by Phillip Nine Mafunga

Silence is not purity
Silent screams or militant thoughts bear no self-sufficiency
Analysis alone is sterile and impotent
By action, the great changed the course of history
For blackness has lost its colour
In the epidemiology of segregation and oppression, masked from reality
My people numbed from pain to a zone of non-being
Left culturally schizophrenic and disoriented
Quarantined in a moral squalor, way away from our black selves
With a drumbeat of self-consciousness, I see the black sphinx rise once again
Drop by drop filling our black hearts with the purity of love once more
Shame to those who campaign vigorous against our being
We are the proprietors of our own history

PHILLIP NINE MAFUNGA
01 June 2020