There is a strange country 

where the sun rises

and another day begins

a country held together 

by borders drawn by hands

that never learned the names

of the rivers they crossed

 

Here, the earth remembers

 

It remembers 

footsteps older than roads

the language of drums

before the language of guns

the hands that planted millet

and called the rain by its first name

 

In this country

children are taught the ABCs

before they learn that

some letters belong to strangers

they grow up knowing 

the sound of an engine

before that of an opportunity 

 

And still they laugh

God, how they laugh

they laugh beneath corrugated roofs

when the rain arrives

they dance at weddings 

with tomorrow sitting quietly in a corner

they make a feast

from almost nothing 

and somehow leave with enough to share

 

There are cities

full of lights

while the villages behind them

remain in the dark

there are villages that 

carry whole histories 

in the wrinkles of old women

sitting beneath wild trees

 

The soil is red

it stains your shoes 

it stays there after the rain

perhaps that is why

everything grows so fiercely 

cassava, maize, jacaranda 

anger, music 

hope

 

Hope especially 

 

It survives

elections 

empty promises

broken hospitals 

long queues

children in the dust looking for reasons to believe 

it survives mothers

who count their children twice

once before the night

and once after

 

This is a strange country 

a place where the dead

are never completely gone

they speak through names

they return in songs

it is a place where the past

is not behind you

it walks beside you

it follows you home

 

And yet

morning keeps coming

 

The markets open

the buses fill

children go to school

someone sweeps yesterday from the doorway

someone falls in love

someone writes a poem

on the back of a receipt 

someone plants a tree

whose shade they will never sit in

 

Maybe this is the strangest part 

a place can be so wounded 

and still make music

after everything, the children 

still look upward when the clouds gather

they wait for the rain

they wait for the thunder

they wait because the sky still has something to say

 

There is beauty here

there is damage too

some of it is easy to see

some of it is not

every morning 

the country wakes up again

life carries on

there is still so much to fix

there is still so much to love

this is a strange country

and somehow

it is home