Ancestral forebears are you now content, I ask?

                                            By Dr. Rose Ure Mezu

Are you now content, ancestral forebears?

You of the liquid poetry, are you truly content?

Brave sable verbal and physical warriors,

Tell me, are your hearts now at rest?

Has the Rubicon been effectively crossed?

Are the collective dreams for which you fought now fulfilled?

Have we all become one? And are you now truly content?

Tell me, Toussaint L’Ouverture, Nat Turner and Denmark Vesey -

You diehard warrior-nationalists with names whistling in the wind,

Who gave your lives to make Black people as free as whites

Is this the dream you saw? And are you at last content with Obama?

Tell me, Booker T. Washington, has gradualism paid off?

Is the economic base secure enough to face equality through the vote?

It has taken 113 years from Atlanta Compromise to this golden Moment

Are you now content, I ask? Is Obama the answer to your life’s labor?

Marcus Garvey, and pre-Mecca Malcolm X, Rev. Jeremiah Wright –

You all and such as you drew the line on the sand

No accommodation, no mixing of the races, no dilution of Black purity

Are you content with Barack Hussein Obama, he of the mixed race?

Consistent in his message of sacrifice, Oneness, Optimism and Hope

Whipping up a post civil rights rainbow generation into a ball of palpable enthusiasm;

Are you now content, I ask? Is Obama the answer to your toil and life’s sacrifice?

Fred Douglass, Alexander Crummell, W.E.B.DuBois, Claude McKay of the

African Blood Brotherhood –  word-warriors and fiery ideologues,

Nnamdi Azikiwe, Kwame Nkrumah, Patrice Lumumba, Nelson Mandela –

Brave nationalists, I ask you, have all our separate dreams now meshed into one?

Our dreams of equity, justice and accommodation, have they now made of

Our America a more perfect union? Are we all now one people, one world?

Martin Luther King, Jr., Fannie Lou Hamer, James L. Farmer, Rosa Parks

Though dead who yet live on, is Martin’s “fierce urgency of now” realized?

Because “little black boys and little black girls” have now joined hands

With “little white boys and little white girls,” you must be content, Martin!

For surely, today’s table of brotherhood is measured by the content of character

And colors of skin seem meshed since the Jew, Caucasian, the African and Asian

Now sit together and can all eat at the same table; Martin, is this the dreamed Moment!

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Wyatt Tee Walker, Jesse Jackson, Harry Belafonte,  Al Sharpton - civil rights activists,

Maya Angelou, Toni Morrison, and Alice Walker - wielders of imagination and word magic,

Chinua Achebe, Soyinka, Ngugi wa Thiong’O, Okechukwu Mezu – PanAfricanists, and

Rudy Lewis, Wilson J.Moses, Ishmael Reed, Rose Mezu, Amin Sharif – living word warriors

And all you others still living, have we arrived at that magical “mountain top” moment,

Passing through the pathway of work and love to an unending treasury of opportunities for all?

All ye nationalists - radical, moderate, conservative – have you coalesced and morphed

Into this lanky Achiever, and dreamer of dreams, son of intellectual, adventuring griots,

Into this youthful Seer and doer of deeds of measured thinking and soaring rhetoric

Who inspires people on a basic human level, who has put power back into we the peoples’ hands

Such that old people seem dazed that their improbable dreams have indeed come true

And the Young can clearly see actual visions of energy, unity and concrete freedom.

In Obama, Hope and Optimism are afloat and yearning hearts soar into flights of freedom

And joyous fellowship, for people have become kinder, more patient and more embracing.

And thus again I ask, is this the magical Moment of that dreamed mountaintop?

Is Barack Obama the Joshua to Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Moses?

Is this the fulfillment of the dreams of generations long gone and living?

Is the change we want Obama?  Have we at last set foot on the Promised Land?

Are you now content, you ancient and recently dead, and living African forebears

That out of the tall savannahs of Africa, a child of your loins is the first global Gentleman?

His wife Michelle and Malia and Sasha now occupy the White House constructed for others

With the calloused hands and sweat and blood of enslaved black and brown forebears?

As America, with a digitalized world, renews itself, Hope transforms a “jangling discord”

Of hate into “a beautiful symphony” played by a man of multicolored race-tapestry

Who as prophesied by McKay stands “erect” like a king in state within America’s walls,

“With not a shred of terror, malice, not a word of jeer” but with Love for All

Poised to pilot America to a new era of true knowing and justice to all unclenched fists.

This son of a father issuing out of a far-off hamlet steers all toward a reaching-out to

Peoples of other climes and tongues with vision pointed outwards to include in

DuBois’s immortal words, Africa, China, and India’s strand / where Kenya and Himalaya

stand and the Nile and Yang-tze roll;

With vision pointed toward the Rising Sun who rule the night and where Black is bright

Barack Obama is a town-crier awakening a sleeping world to honor the sun of Justice and Truth.

Surely, ancient, free and enslaved African forebears, at last, your hearts must be content!

19-20 January 2009

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The New Dawn of a Thousand Splendid Suns

                                                     By Dr. Rose Ure Mezu

With just one vote cast in America, everywhere a new world is born

Morning yesterday, and late into the next day, it was still morning

Morning here and there and, everywhere cold and misery stopped

On faces smiles, laughter boomed forth, fists pumped into the air

Horns hooted the night owl away to make room for the cheery hare 

It is the dawn of a New Day, from happy hearts new plans are afoot

For now it is okay to smile, it is fashionable to dream dreams again

Not just to plot and scheme looking for a gun and a gain

Not just to shoot in the foot and hurl all the bad names in the book

Now, it’s the in-thing to be young again, young as this new dawn

Indeed, the Age of Aquarius is with us anew, a golden age of youth

The Age of a thousand splendid suns, of baking heat; something’s cooking

Something, something good to eat and share and also more to give away

Not hoarding according to creed or tongue or color or race; an Age of the

New moon when the old sit around and watch the young at moonlit play

From coast to coast, from all peoples black and white and brown and yellow

Jubilant shouts fill the air, caps and scarves like confetti thrown up in the sky

A thrilling new moment that captures the end of an old order of rancorous dislike

The passing of an age of strife and of wars that turned the world into a wasteland

And pitted hearts against hearts, nations against nations, people against people

Making their mock against the divine dictum of Love Thy Neighbor as Thyself

Upon us once again is the Age of Romance and idealism that stirs and thrills the soul

When a tall, lanky, young Black, self-assured, with the DNA and voice of a Kenyan griot

Stands tall and proclaims that we are one nation – no black or brown or white or yellow

That all nations are all one people, one God-ordained rainbow world, and we all can be,

If only we can believe in the Change We Need, and that Oh, yes, We Can, indeed!

Articulate and young, with flourishing oratorical skills, he dares all to dream again

If Barack Obama is a man of destiny, no human being can change it. 

Four years ago, there was no Obama on the national scene, but today there is

Barack is a creature come to fill a vast and deep void that is crying to be filled. 

The hungry heart to stay alive will always grab at the food and drink it is offered

And since the old track road is dusty, foot-worn and strewn with pricking thorns

Peoples tread this New Path in answer to the call of this throbbing freshly-strung Drum

Seeking to Spread the Wealth of the New Deal’s warmth both at home and abroad

Barack Hussein Obama – as unlikely a name as Guess Who comes to Dinner

But in a world in which old and young dare to laugh again, hope and dream

Nothing, nothing it seems is impossible and anything, and everything can happen!

He has other names too – Inspirational, Kennedyesque, New Camelot Reborn

Transformational, Transgenerational, Transcendent, PostCivil Rights, PostRacial

But I call him TransAfrica – a New World Hybrid of free White and Black Love

That comes to lay to quiet rest the ghosts of slavery, greed and ignorance

That comes to cleanse and heal and soothe the gaping wound on Africa’s soul

That comes to wipe clean the stain on the soul of America, this New World of wonder

That is an experiment on multicultural living with colors as bright as the Rainbow

That heralds the New Age of a thousand brilliant suns, and is it any wonder,

That in Africa, we always believed that it is Yet Morning on God’s Creation Day.

November 5, 2008