I keep rising

By Dr Abdoulie Sallah

In your darkest ages

My civilisation was in its advanced stages

I was progressively prosperous

And you were told tales of my prosperity

You voyaged thousands of miles in lines 

You came because you heard how well I was doing without you

My wealth and history dumbfound your imagination

You violated me with violence

And looted my resources

You yoked me in chains without acknowledging my pains for your gains

You shackled my physical being but failed to conquer my divine spirit

How you have doomed my noon so soon with a boom

I became a stranger stranded in a stranger’s land

But I keep rising

You gave me a manufactured identity 

Poisoned my perceived consciousness

Catapulted me into the abyss of subhuman 

And tranquilised me with the drug of inferiority 

But my venerated spirit was unbroken

I keep rising

You bought and sold me like your property

And made me a commodity of your pleasure

Day and night I toiled your soil

With your whips shredding my beautiful black skin

I have died a thousand deaths

But I keep rising

Generations after generations after generations

You have lynched me in your dreadful coliseums

Drowned me in your opium of gradualism

Hanged me on trees, poles and in your political ghettos  

Brutalised me through systems of coalitions and confusions

Maimed me through your institutions of incarceration 

Dehumanised me through your intellectual psychosis 

Shot me with bullets and ballpoint pens

But I keep rising

I will keep rising despite your barbaric masterplan

I will keep rising despite your hatred of my being

I will keep rising despite your savagery and battering

I will keep rising despite your knees on my neck

I will keep rising despite your seven bullets on my back

I will keep rising despite your chokehold to stop me breathing

I will keep rising despite your institutions creating my destitution

I will keep rising despite your fortified fortresses made to keep me down and out

For you can never break my spirit

For you can never bend my will

For you can never delete my existence

For you will never defeat my consciousness 

For I was in the beginning

And I shall be in the end 

For I am the cradle of civilisation

For I was born to rise