Last night I was listening and watching in Eritrean TV an inspiring success story of Tegadalay whose both legs (knee down) amputated as a result of war. His sees his physical impairment not as a misfortune, but as a challenge to life or as an opportunity to learn new things. For life per se is a struggle indeed. Now let us turn to our poem:
Please give us tools, nor clothes nor foods
For we have hands, with which to cultivate our lands
As an African saying goes: A poverty is slavery
And an idleness is a root of beggary
Or in the words of Britons:
A moving stone gathers no moss
So are those hardworking people
Who love to dig, till and sift
Just to meet ends with dignity
A cure, a pill, to self-pity.
We can if we think we can
For by nature we are human
Endowed with a brain faculty
A store house of ideas and imagery
That can build or destroy nature
A paragon of God's wonder.
Yesterday's colonial masters
We are never and no never
In the company of fools
Just give us tools not foods
It is our guiding principle, otherwise
That we call a SELF-RELIANCE
How simple and noble of its kind
We can witness in our homeland
In spite of conspiracy and all odds
Amid unsafe and hostile world.
Eternal glory to our martyrs!!!
Haile Bokure
Received on Sun Jun 23 2013 - 22:09:24 EDT