To The Ordinary People Poem by Tony Adah

To you my people I sing
To those on the street, in the farm
In the market,
Oh, the ordinary people I sing for you and to you I sing
To you the Greeks handed democracy
Still away with it the tyrants say
People, chain your neighbour's heart
With links of courage and determination to your own
Speak now,
Democracy is a loud cymbal
Which opens the tyrant's ear
And douses the flames of flagrant rule.
If you drink of opium and sleep
You will wake again hungry and weak
Gulps and gulps of opium
And your country sleeps,
The musket's volleys sing
And the king garbed in his regal robes, sits and preside over
Looted wealth.
You are not too ordinary
To understand the solemn affection
Of freedom and until you understand
None among you will be king.
How many of the sleepy cups of opium
Will sooth your greedy throat?
And suffice your somnolent eyes?
Is hunger a dividend of democracy?
Darkness, sickness and ignominy
Where you grope, are they domains
In city of liberty?
Don't sit hungry and drowsy
Democracy is not a sacralum worshipped only by a few men
It is of you, by you and for you
A dogma, the only one that stands
Between the heavens and the earth
Rise up
Democracy is like rain
It does rain on every one.