Word's Harm? Poem by Thabani Khumalo

What harm can do a word –
A word that’s never held a gun,
Never even embarked a ship
And sailed across the ocean blue
To make it to the other shore
Against the raging breakers,
To gut, with rage, the virgin wild;
To cut across the African wild,
To shoot down dead, the son of man
And render him a vagrant,
And strip away his manly pride
And turn him into his enemy,
And plant for him a poison
To force him to feed his children,
And cause him to stand against his foe
Who happens to be his brother,
And enslave him to till his land
Which is what you had marauded him?

The word I build from the same alphabet you taught me,
I wrote down in the same sentence you gave me
And now the word is grave to you
Because I put it in a poem.
What harm can do a word?
Because the fingers trigger bullets
And guns and bullets, your fingers own
And the right to legally murder.