Karla Angela P. Tolarba

BSed 2-N

We Have Come Home

- Lenrie Peters

We have come home
From the bloodless wars
With sunken hearts
Our booths full of pride-
From the true massacre of the soul
When we have asked
‘What does it cost
To be loved and left alone’

We have come home
Bringing the pledge
Which is written in rainbow colours
Across the sky-for burial
But is not the time
To lay wreaths
For yesterday’s crimes,
Night threatens
Time dissolves
And there is no acquaintance
With tomorrow

The gurgling drums
Echo the stars
The forest howls
And between the trees
The dark sun appears.

We have come home
When the dawn falters
Singing songs of other lands
The death march
Violating our ears
Knowing all our loves and tears
Determined by the spinning coin

We have come home
To the green foothills
To drink from the cup
Of warm and mellow birdsong
‘To the hot beaches
Where the boats go out to sea
Threshing the ocean’s harvest
And the hovering, plunging
Gliding gulls shower kisses on the waves

We have come home
Where through the lightening flash
And the thundering rain
The famine the drought,
The sudden spirit
Lingers on the road
Supporting the tortured remnants
of the flesh
That spirit which asks no favour
of the world
But to have dignity.

Will there be a rainbow to the bullet of a bloodless war?

Have you ever experienced being dominated? Abused by others?

The feeling of being a slave is not as easy as we think. During the war of colonialism, African people had been traded for goods. They have been an exchange though there have been no action guns fired but they served as a bullet during those times. The slaves had been the gunpowder, wine and sugar. Their lives were traded for this base offering. They suffered much from the true massacre of the soul.

Until now slavery in different ways still exist. Many suffered hardships. They’ve been used for pleasure, for entertainment, for abundance. They’ve been in bondage that others can’t see. Like Africans, Filipinos during the colonialism experienced the same way. All who suffered from the colonialist would feel the same way. I can imagine what these victims felt and how they suffered from the hand of those people who has no mercy.

Slavery is a real existing dilemma that many had been through.

But, along the circumstances they suffered from there lays a pledge written in rainbow colours. A rainbow which symbolizes equality and they come home representing oneness. Still there is a hope that in spite of the diversities in colors there will be equality that will exist.

After all they have come home though they see little that pleases them outside the natural scenery. They have come home where the lightning flash and the thundering rain, the famine, the drought do not bring down the spirit of the man whose flesh is tortured beyond support but of his spirit. And the reason his spirit lives on is the hope of the eternal cry of the Africans; to have dignity!..