If I had been you, I’d still be proud.
Aren't you the mother of the Pharaohs?
Makers of a civilization forever alive?
Aren't you the one who took care of me
When dad was put in jail or killed?
Aren't you the one who stood firm against Apartheid?
When I was in my Island jail?
You were the arc and the arrow,
the gate and the inside of everything
that the world should be proud of.
There is nothing that it possesses for me to compare with thee.
That blackness of thee has made you that nothing, and nothing
that hidden treasure, that unknown, the beginning of everything,
the real.
Only because of the natural law of duality
that I’m here to witness that you are,
that pure Jewel not to be worn by those
who have not seen the light. You tell them, tell them
that you are the diamond of the Transvaal, the ebony of
the deep forest that treasure, that real, and the only real.
So if I had been you, mother, sister, wife, daughter,
Black woman, I will be proud of everything
I had brought to the world.
I wish I can be like you, but because of your higher
spirit, I can only be I and you that noble
but humble of the most humble.
Love you
« return.