Traces Poem by Rachel Adams

Your contours that mark the sand
Depresses the earth into an outline
You are traces of a man
Hollowed out by the horror of your pain

Oh! Son of man, where is ye shame?
You are bound like an ox to a chain
Your body sways like a pendulum
As you lower and harvest your grain

Chains bind you to your fellow beasts
So that feet that once ran move now in defeat
They motion as a reminder of your labours
And the bond you have with your captors

Liberty, justice and all that was good
You were made to abandon for a morsel of food
'Yes Master, no Master, three bags full Master'
Baa the woolly sheep bleated in surrender.

Why let the dust of your labours
That fill the air with their derision
Settle willingly on your once dark skin
Mixing your blackness into a confusion

Black is the colour of your past
Black was the colour of your rituals
Black feet ran and black hands played
Black babies were the dawn of a new age

You let that slip through your fears
Your memory blurred by ashes
Your brain that incinerated your courage
Condemned you to the life of a savage

Rise up, son of man who fears freedom
Your traces will have no roots
An outline of your existence
Is a hollow grave without its occupant

Don't preach the Bible as your saviour
Unless you have more to offer
Don't mark your history by enslavement
And the heritage you were made to abandon

That chain that links your past
To a future that is bleak
Is a God of eternal bonds
Secured by your future Masters

Your children walk in the shadows of your enslavement
Morphing your chains into a cross
A freedom founded on great men and courage
Is short-lived by bitter recriminations

The ghettos, the drugs, the guns and deaths
The rap that is the anthem of your anger
Makes a chain between right hand and left
As your youth disappears forever