The Future Calls Answer It Not The Past, Poem by Sarah Mkhonza

The past calls and weighs you down,
It hangs around your neck,
This past of voyages in the dark,
For you did not fail, you dreamt,
Dreams that were trodden down in places,
Where people called you names,
Where insults came one after another,
Now the words from there call you,
Haunting you in the darkness of loneliness,
Just look forward and not back there,
For it calls you to an end,
That does not have a trail,
That leads to any future.


You walked it like a tightrope,
Your sweated and wiggled your waist,
Undoing the tangles that tied you to it,
Now you have left it do not look back,
For it is in your mind to do so,
For it is all you know,
Seek the future even in the dark,
Create a life like no other,
One with dreams as high as the mountains,
And walk into it with the boldness of a kudu,
That jumps with each leap and keeps on,
Jumping into the next,
Oblivious of the snares of poachers.
For they long to stall the jumps,
That you make so boldly.

You alone can know it the way it came to you,
You alone can do it right,
Share it and not hide it,
And work to the finish,
For it is there that rest will come,
And greet you with the courage,
Of a final act of victory.

The past is yelling all the time,
Telling you of cliffs and dongas,
Creating darkness all around you,
Making you see woe and not will,
Yet they bang against each other all the time,
One a winner, the other a loser.
For it attacks with ideas of itself,
And makes you think it is when it is not.
When the past calls you, do not listen.
Shut your ears and go to the future.
For there is only tomorrow,
To plan for and the past to regret,
For it is the time we spent blankly,
Looking in front of us and not doing.

Keep on jumping into the air,
When the past holds you at the waist,
Kick it for it will kick back,
And find yours a stronger kick,
One to reckon with always,
For you were born to win,
The battles of the future,
Not those of the past,
That yells and always says no.










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