Just Give Us Hope

james agada

james agada

Monday 22 February 2021

( An inauguration poem )

Hope is what brings us here

From the time we asked the British to leave

The hope of a new nation beckoned on us

with alluring promises that we anchored on

We knew the journey will be hard

with friends, we have just met becoming brothers

and other strangers we did not remember inviting

filling the tent

Hope told us the tent was big enough

that the land was rich enough

that the rivers were full enough

Hope is what brings here again

Hope for the hope that the dream

will become true

and we will slap our brothers back and not their cheeks

that we will distinguish the stranger from the friend

and the tent will truly be enough

Hope that our search for the promise

made when we chased the British away

and even before then when the bibles came and took our land

and restrained our hands from selling our brothers

for mirrors and guns

Hope is what brings us today again

We knew the journey will be hard

but not this hard,

We knew the race will be long

but not this long

Hope told us our generation will not die off

as we went around the desert in forty years, and then forty nights

and another forty years again

until we are now here

Hope is what you, all of you owe us

that our dreams will be less bloody

and our days be less dreary.

Just give us hope.