Slavery

This poem was inspired by the following, brilliant poem "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" by Langston Hughes:

I've known rivers:
I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.
I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.
I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.
I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln went down to New Orleans, and I've seen its muddy bosom turn all golden in the sunset.

I've known rivers:
Ancient, dusky rivers.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

You can hear it read by Hughes, along with an explanation of how it came to be written here.

He wrote this when he was 16 - I am not in his league nor do I have his direct experience of being an African-American, but here's something I wrote for National Poetry Day and Black History month 2017.

Slavery

There's something visceral about
seeing a human in chains;
hunger in their belly,
desolation in their eyes;
watching as coins are passed
from hand to hand
and their ownership from one
to another;

That smashes through
the basic revulsion that the
concept of slavery
should engender within.
Where any shred of
human decency would
demand a call to arms
to banish it forever.

To raise the sharpest axe
and bring it crashing
onto and through the manacles
and scream "Enough!"
No-one should stand by and watch
as a human being
is sold down the River.

(c) Tim Fellows 2017