A Poem

Free Gambia

By Mathew K Jallow

I felt the blues slowly seeping into my thoughts

I felt the burden on tyranny weighing on my consciousness

As my thoughts recede into the darkness of my mind

Spiraling into the depths of hopeless depression

Now my heart heavy with sorrowful grief

For the stolen glory of the peoples’ voice

A nation enslaved and in despair

Will I ever see a Kambi Bolong that is again free?

Will I ever walk the towering hills of Sare Gainako one more time?

To watch the pure white egrets sing a lullaby to a lost calf

As the majestic eagle circle over head looking for a kill

Where rice crops sway and dance to the call of the wind

And carry the sorrow of a people to the ends of the land

Where hearts yearning to be free prowl in agony

Will the sweet smell of swamp mud beckon me home again?

Where the multitude of sunken eyes have lost the will to live

And only sad despair stared back at me from their hollow faces

A nation under tyranny now on the throes of Armageddon

We mourn for you dear Gambia our beloved homeland

The burden of misery looming over a nation once again

A peaceful nation in under the spell of a tyrant

We have lived to fight the demons of a monster

But now we are growing old and feeble and too weak to carry on

The strength to fight slowly ebbing out of our steely determination

But we will not give up this divine mission

To fight on until we can fight no more

And give voice to a nation in distress

To free Gambia from the clutches of a murderous tyrant

And when the time comes for me to die

Let them say he did his best for the country he so loved

As rest my soul under the shadow of the big Jabhe tree

Where the ghosts of my so long gone ancestors peacefully rest

To forever wander the empty spaces of my Sare Gainako childhood

When the peoples’ voices reigns supreme in the land once again