Symphony Of Unheard Groans Poem by Chinedu Dike

Every waking breath lived under planned fear,
made to crush resistance before thoughts formed.
This cruelty started far from distant plantations,
where innocent people were stolen from villages.
Greed split the land as kingdoms raided,
trading human lives for guns and goods,
leaving broken homes and empty fields behind.

Chained neck to neck, captives walked months
through strange lands beneath heavy wooden clubs.
They had never seen pale foreign faces,
nor heard the sudden roar of waves
that filled their tired hearts with dread.
At the shore, ship doctors checked them
like cattle, testing teeth, eyes, and skin.
Anyone weak, sick, thin, or past thirty-five
was cast aside in cold trade books.

Left outside stone walls or dark corners,
the sick were denied water and food.
Denied medical attention, they were left alone
in the cold until their death.
When sickness spread, guards rushed into cells,
killing the weak or dumping them at sea.
Some stayed at castles as permanent slaves,
cleaning contaminated cells and mending stone walls,
while others worked local fields until death.

Before ships came, stone forts swallowed sky,
built as cold machines to break spirits.
White-hot irons burned company marks into skin
before hundreds crowded into airless dark rooms.
They lived at times for months in filth—
a layer of dried blood and human waste
that made them sick.

Yet defiance burned inside those stone walls,
forcing empires to build stronger castle forts.
Rebels were hanged or beheaded before crowds,
or sealed in rock cells without air,
beneath a carved skull warning the living.
Above damp cells holding women and girls,
captors walked fine floors over prison ceilings,
taking and raping women whenever they wished.
Women who fought back were stripped naked,
locked in pitch-black boxes under hot suns,
or sealed in airless rooms to suffocate.
Below, hundreds of girls slept in urine,
blood, and faeces, refusing to surrender pride.

Starvation shrank bodies to fit narrow halls,
a cruel plan to drain fighting strength.
Before boarding, heads were shaved against lice,
and whips drove them through stone gates—
the Door of No Return—to waiting boats,
leaving home forever for the cold sea.

Stone walls became groaning timber upon a sea,
where a handful of armed men ruled hundreds
through sheer dread.
Crammed into dark holds too low to sit upright,
captives lay shackled at ankle and wrist,
pinned shoulder to shoulder on rough planks
as the wooden hull rolled through endless swells.
Stagnant heat hung thick with sweat and fever,
while bare boards ground chained flesh raw
with every wave.

The living lay chained beside cold corpses,
enduring up to ninety haunted days
of piercing screams and muffled, hopeless groans.
In calm seas, crews lowered tubs of mash twice daily,
hauling trembling captives onto the bright deck
to jump in heavy irons for forced exercise.
Yet when fierce storms bolted the hatches shut,
or dead winds stalled the ship on glassy water,
meals shrank to a single scrap, or vanished.

Shattered by grief, many chose starvation,
clamping their teeth shut against the spoon.
Sailors forced clenched jaws open with coals
and iron jaw-screws—not out of mercy,
but to protect the price each body would bring.
Months without fresh fruit brought bleeding gums,
while stagnant barrel water spread bloody rot
that swept through the dark like silent fire.

At dawn, enslaved women were led onto deck
to grind grain and stir heavy boiling pots,
trading the airless hold for sailors' cruel hands.
Fresh water was rationed to one tiny cup daily,
drawn from leaky casks fouled with green slime,
leaving cracked lips begging for rain.

Across four centuries, thirty-six thousand ships
carried over twelve million souls from home.
Nearly two million perished before seeing land,
with deaths soaring when smallpox tore through holds.
Under European law, people were mere cargo,
and merchants collected insurance gold
for captives thrown alive into the waves—
recording murder as a simple ledger loss.

Still, captives whispered rebellion in mother tongues,
rising barehanded against iron and muskets
on one in ten ships.
Crews strung high nets along the rails
to trap those who leaped toward death,
hanging rebel leaders and flogging survivors
before weeping eyes.
Even common sailors suffered under greedy captains
who starved and overworked crews to avoid wages,
losing one in five men to fever before anchor fell.

Each grey morning, sailors heaved lifeless bodies,
while silent grey sharks trailed the bloody wake.
Coastal ports smelled slave ships miles offshore,
until green hills rose on the horizon
and heavy chains rattled down—
trading the endless sorrow of the sea
for a fresh nightmare on land.

Thin survivors were dragged into holding pens,
while crews scraped weeks of filth from holds,
washing planks with hot vinegar and sulphur
before loading sugar, rum, tobacco, and cotton.
The very same boards that held chained people
carried their harvest back to European ports,
keeping the cruel trade triangle turning endlessly.

Meanwhile, doctors and sailors prepared captives,
shaving grey hairs, rubbing skin with shiny oil,
and packing open whip wounds with black tar.
Painful pastes and plugs hid stomach sickness
before buyers inspected them like farm animals—
prodding muscles, checking teeth, forcing jumps.

Sellers tore apart families and shared tongues,
blocking comfort, memory, or plans to revolt.
Placed on auction blocks, people lost dignity,
sold as simple goods to the highest bidders.
New owners burned initials into backs with iron,
while those left lame, blind, or wasting away
were auctioned in cheap lots to speculators,
or dumped in lonely marshes to die.

Quiet arrivals were marched straight to work,
while rebels went to harsh seasoning camps,
violent places built to break strong wills.
For many months, captives faced brutal labour,
hunger, torture, and fevers under cruel bosses.
Over a third died during this shock,
buried in shallow, unmarked graves
before their plantation labour ever began.

On the crop fields, enslavers kept tight control
through constant watching, pain, and clever tricks,
giving small favours to divide the workers.

Enslaved families built rough huts of wood,
clay, and stone with leaking straw roofs
that invited fire, mould, and biting pests.
Winter wind and snow blew through cracks,
while windowless rooms trapped stifling heat.

Many families slept crammed on dirty straw
over bare earth, with zero privacy left.
Without toilets, people relieved themselves
inside bushes, turning crowded huts into nests
of sickness.
The old and sick died from neglect,
yet after dark, captives made huts homes,
keeping old tongues and stories alive quietly.

Before crops grew, millions of jungle acres
had to fall to heavy hand axes.
Giant trees split and crashed without warning,
crushing limbs while bosses gave zero safety.

Workers dug deep roots out by hand
and burned brush, breathing toxic smoke daily.
In swamps, they stood knee-deep in water
for fourteen hours, bitten by deadly snakes
and mosquitoes carrying malaria and yellow fever.
Small cuts rotted into gangrene in filth,
bringing slow deaths or rough limb amputations.
Planters in Brazil and islands expected deaths,
buying new ships to replace broken lives.

Early work rules hardened as numbers grew,
scaring rich rulers into writing iron laws.
Barbados wrote the first code in sixteen-sixty-one,
and Virginia followed, binding every newborn baby
to the lifelong slavery of its mother.
French, Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, and Swedish laws
all locked human beings into legal property.

These laws erased personhood, making living souls
goods to lose at dice, leave in wills,
win in raffles, or give at weddings.
Blackness meant bondage, banning trade, property,
courts, and the basic right to defend oneself.
Killing a slave during punishment brought fines,
while killing another's slave meant property damage.

Marriages held no legal protection at all,
though owners allowed them to breed wealth.
Preachers stood beside lawmakers, claiming from pulpits
that slavery was God's curse demanding obedience,
while church orders branded captives for faith.

From before dawn until night, everyone worked
to harvest riches they would never touch.
In hot sugar fields, workers cut cane
until muscles tore, while heavy mill rollers
crushed trapped arms and boiling syrup scalded others.
On tobacco farms, bent backs picked worms,
forced to swallow live insects if missed.

Cotton season tore bare fingers on bolls,
while swampy rice beds bred burning fevers.
Indigo, coffee, and hemp brought distinct pain,
and missing daily weights brought twenty lashes.
Even after midnight chores, workers feared sleep,
knowing missing the morning horn meant blood.

House servants slept on cold mansion floors,
on call all night under cruel eyes.
In dark silver mines, workers breathed dust
and poison fumes, while others dug canals,
built forts, or dived for pearls breathless.
Factory hands fed hot furnaces without gear,
and night cleaners waded deep in sewage,
carrying foul loads by dim lantern light.

When cholera struck, owners fled and left
workers trapped in rot without gloves,
piling leaking corpses of friends into carts.
Towns wrongly blamed cleaners for spreading plague,
policing them harder as carriers of death.
Whether toiling in fields or crowded towns,
every captive lived beneath the threat of torture.

Outnumbered owners feared an unbroken spirit most,
turning simple daily life into a punishable crime.
Cruelty was staged in the open before crowded yards,
using public terror to keep entire plantations quiet.
Overseers paid by the harvest drove workers hard,
forcing enslaved drivers to whip their own kin.
Slow hands, late steps, or a raised eye brought fury.

The cowhide whip ruled every waking hour,
leaving raised scars across generations of backs.
To stretch the agony, bosses rubbed salt, vinegar,
and hot pepper into fresh, bleeding wounds.
Even pregnant women were never spared the lash.
Cruel masters dug hollow holes into the bare earth
to cradle swollen bellies and protect unborn 'property, '
while leather tore the mothers' backs above.

Beyond the whip, cold iron turned bodies into cages.
Workers wore heavy spiked collars that blocked sleep,
and thick ankle chains linked to bruising iron balls.
In Brazil and the islands, metal masks locked mouths,
silencing voices and stopping desperate attempts to die.
Thumbscrews crushed bone, wooden stocks locked limbs,
and iron gags silenced screams in dark plantation jails.

Laws carved permanent warnings into living flesh.
Hot branding irons burned initials deep into cheeks,
while blades cropped ears and slit noses for running.
Cruel courts severed the Achilles tendon behind the heel,
crippling brave runners so they could never flee again.
In towns, rich owners paid public workhouses
to strap captives onto spinning wooden treadmills,
smashing stumbling shins with every exhausting turn.

Sexual terror was wielded as a weapon of control.
Enslaved women faced constant assault without shelter,
while cold colonial courts mocked their pain—
treating rape not as a crime against a woman,
but merely as trespassing upon a master's goods.

Yet the deepest wound needed no iron or blade.
Troublesome rebels were torn from weeping families,
sold south to brutal cotton fields or distant islands.
Even founding leaders shipped defiant captives
to the deadly sugar mills of the Indies,
turning family separation into a slow death sentence.
Reading was banned to stop forged travel passes,
leaving minds locked in darkness while bodies bled.

When whips failed to bend proud hearts,
owners hired slave breakers to shatter minds.
These poor farmers got free work for many months
by turning strong souls into trembling shadows.
Work ran from freezing dark to heat,
and leather tore skin for slow hands.

Cruel tricks replaced rest and quiet peace.
Starvation weakened bodies, while constant beatings
and sudden surprises crushed all hope of safety.
Hidden watchers lurked behind fences and trees,
making captives feel watched even in sleep.
Months of terror drained pride and rebellion,
sending broken workers back to their masters' fields—
numbed into silent obedience,
moving only when another voice commanded them.

Across British, French, Spanish, and Portuguese colonies,
cold legal codes turned terror into public theatre,
staging terrible shows of pain in crowded squares
to freeze entire populations into quiet obedience.
The punishment needed no broken rules,
for existence itself was deemed a constant crime.
The colour of skin, the shape of the head,
and the sound of native tongues made simple breathing
look like an insolent, rebellious offence.

For those who dared to flee, the law carved steps of ruin:
a first escape cost cropped ears and a branded shoulder;
a second severed the tendons behind the knees;
a third—or raising a hand against a master—meant death.
In town squares, wooden pillories locked wrists and necks,
leaving captives exposed to jeers and stones for days.
Others were hung by a single wrist from gallows beams,
forced to balance a bare heel upon a sharp wooden stake
while every muscle screamed for mercy.

To break stubborn spirits, cruelty took monstrous shapes.
Runaways were tied naked over nests of biting ants,
left pinned through the night as insects devoured flesh.
In Suriname and the islands, tormentors used meat hooks,
driving sharp iron through ribs to hang living bodies
from high tree branches under a burning sky.
Elsewhere, rebels were buried alive up to their necks
in scorching sand, left helpless to face the sun and insects.

When enslaved people rose in larger rebellions,
colonial courts answered with spectacles of agony.
Condemned leaders were locked inside tight iron cages—
gibbets shaped to the human frame—and hung alive
from gallows or trees to starve in the open air,
their rotting bones left swinging for years as warnings.
Others were tied to wooden posts piled high with straw
and burned alive before the watching crowds,
a fate reserved for rebels accused of arson or poison.

The cruelest engine of all was the heavy wooden wheel.
An iron bar shattered the arms and legs of leaders
before their broken bodies were woven through spokes.
Hoisted high on a towering pole against the empty sky,
they lingered in slow agony from thirst and broken bone
while circling vultures gathered in plain sight of fields.

Even outside the courts, mob violence knew no mercy.
Black men accused of crossing racial lines faced fury;
under the excuse of protecting white honour,
angry mobs castrated, hanged, and burned them publicly,
turning human suffering into a warning carved in ash.

These horrors were not shadows—they bore real names.
In Jamaica, overseer Thomas Thistlewood kept diaries
of years spent torturing captives.
He whipped starving Derby for eating a stalk of cane,
rubbed sharp lime juice and pepper into his cuts,
and forced another captive to defecate in Derby's mouth.
He called this vile act 'Derby's dose' to break pride,
then sealed Derby's mouth with a tight gag
to lock the filth inside.

In New Orleans, wealthy Madame Delphine LaLaurie
chased young Lia with a whip across her mansion.
The terrified child leaped from a roof to her death
rather than face the lash again.
Later, when fire swept through the house, rescuers broke
a locked attic door and found captives starved and scarred,
bound in iron collars with broken bones and mouths sewn—
all hidden for years behind silk dresses and gold.

Across the Carolinas, planters locked defiant workers
inside narrow wooden sweatboxes under the blazing sun,
baking living bodies until breathing nearly stopped.
In Maryland, slave breaker Edward Covey stalked fields
like a silent snake, twisting faith into a whip.
Seeing captives not as people, but as beasts to tame,
he used hunger, sudden beatings, and sexual terror
to crush young minds for even the smallest mistake.

Every European empire left its mark in blood.
In Dutch Suriname, Susanna du Plessis drowned a baby
in a river simply because its tears disturbed sleep,
while planters hung runaways from trees by iron hooks
driven through their ribs.
On Danish Saint John, Governor Philip Gardelin passed laws
that pinched rebel leaders with red-hot iron tongs
before breaking their bones upon a wooden wheel.
In Swedish Saint Barthélemy, officials chained captives
to heavy iron cannonballs and whipped them in squares
until salty sea winds burned their torn backs.

Under Spanish rule in Cuba, officials tied suspects
spread-eagle to heavy wooden ladders,
flogging them from neck to heel until blood pooled
in the dust.
In Haiti, French masters buried rebels up to chins,
smearing their faces with sweet cane syrup
so armies of stinging ants would devour them alive.
In Portuguese Brazil, rulers feared freedom fighters most.
After capturing Zumbi, the brave warrior king of Palmares,
soldiers beheaded him and mounted his head on a pole
until it rotted, hoping to kill the dream of liberty.

Yet no master's cruelty could reach the quiet night.
Under cover of darkness, healers crushed forest roots,
tree bark, and cool moss to soothe torn, bleeding backs.
Brave souls risked the whip inside hidden woods
to trace secret letters in the dirt, whisper old songs,
and hold one another tight against a world of hate.

Seeking freedom meant walking a razor's edge,
yet thousands risked everything to slip into dark.
Hired slave catchers tracked runaways through swamps
and jagged mountains, following twigs and footprints.
Armed night patrols rode every road on horseback,
unleashing vicious bloodhounds trained to tear flesh.

At midnight, patrollers kicked down cabin doors,
free to whip or shoot anyone caught outside
without a written pass.
In towns, newspapers printed tiny runaway sketches,
offering gold rewards for captives brought back
dead or alive.
From forest thickets to river crossings, danger
watched every step, proving no corner of the land
was ever truly safe.

Across four hundred years of blood and chains,
the war for freedom never stopped a single day.
Captives knew their sweat built wealth for empires,
so they fought back quietly inside fields and mills.
They slowed down harvests, broke heavy iron tools,
and faked sudden fevers to starve masters' greed.

Others rose up in open fury when moment struck.
From the mountain strongholds of Jamaica and Suriname
to the deep swamps of Florida and Brazil,
escaped captives built free Maroon towns
that defied whole armies.
In Haiti, enslaved warriors overthrew an empire,
proving chains could be shattered by united courage.

Try as they might to erase Africa from memory,
enslavers could not kill the soul carried across sea.
From the agony of fields, a vibrant culture rose.
It lived in coded spirituals sung beneath stars,
hiding secret maps to freedom inside gentle melodies.
It echoed in talking drumbeats sending warnings
across dark hills, and in elders' stories
reminding children of their royal roots.

Every modern song of freedom, justice, and hope
still carries the heartbeat of those who refused
to break.
The enslavers' cruel slave kingdoms were shattered
at last, while children of captives stand tall
across the globe—shaping the world as artists,
thinkers, and leaders whose voices will never
be silenced again.

Slavery stands as a stark, dark monument
to human greed that turned living people
into property and left deep wounds across ages.
Yet when whips fell silent and iron cages rusted,
the human mind remained unconquered ground—
a fortress that no spiked collar, sweatbox,
or gallows could ever truly break or claim.

The tale of immense suffering that African captives
endured under European colonisers across Americas
is never a story of defeat.
Instead, it stands as the greatest proof of courage
the world has ever witnessed.
Now the charge passes to every living generation:
to remember their names, guard the truth,
and defend human dignity.
For justice is a mighty river that no cruelty can dam,
and its light outshines the darkest chains forever.