A Call Across The Sea Poem by Martins Akhoeneto

What timid outcry we hear from here?
At these other side of the western sea
A place were chauvinist call us blacks
Where craftiness and fraud are our tags
Each night, we mourn our soul friends
Victims of war, humbled by blasts
How and when will this be ever heard;
A soothen news of typical Africa.


Pride of our fathers, turn shadows
Where is the delight, zeal and patriotism
No act of chauvinism can be scanned
Not even from the money bag thieves
Literate hoodlums in garment of ambassadors
Diminishing our beloved fatherland
Turning our western neighbourhoods into empires
With many elevated edifice and statues


Let this be a passionate note
Let it be heard at the other end of Africa
That mockery is now friend to monkey
Why not copy the western folks
Who showed us this road many years ago
How many soul-killing cry do you hear
O’ poor humbled patriots of anguish.
Sects upon sects, donating bombs as gifts.


Canaan-like had been our land
With free flowing harvest in seasons
And an heaven’s gift of sweet crude
Run across it coastal shelves
Drowning a hundred hectares of fields
A delta, as pay-machines for southern dwellers
Yet stealing the goose's golden eggs
Has done more harm than good.


If our call shall resound,
The true worth of civilization
Shall stand and speak in tunes
Repeating the rhythm of a dying race.
Only from our mirror reflection
Can the true-value be known?
The real essence of brotherly love
The pride of a sovereign state shall abound.