The Poet

Gentlemen awaken from your slumber,
Death for your cause is really a birth.
Can four million butchers forever
Enslave nineteen million warriors?

Hey Soweto,
We hear you.
Shake your chains sleeping.
Wake up to rattle the world.

Hey fat merchants
With your blood money,
Hawk your diamonds and gold
Throughout the world.
Build your mounds of profit
On our graves.
Yes Chrysler,
Yes I.B.M.,
Yes G.M.,
Your empires are dug
On the Graves
Of our babies.

Hey Soweto,
We hear you.
Shake your chains sleeping giant.
Wake up to rattle the world.

Dainty flowery gentry
Tip through your courts;
Dine on wine and honey
As you pluck our grapes.

Your sweetness rests on our sweat.
Your cargoes sparkle with diamonds and rubles.
Your trade winds blow throughout the world.
The skeleton of our fathers
Man your ships
And load your cargo.
Just as with leeches,
Your boats run on
Our blood.

Hey Soweto,
We hear you.
Shake your chains sleeping giant.
Wake up to rattle the world.

Fat flimsy women bear your children
For our mothers to raise.
Your children grow plump from
The milk of our babies.
Your women grow fat on
The bones of our mothers.
Yes, soft women play your harps
While black women scrub your floors.

Hey Soweto,
We hear you.
Shake your chains sleeping giant.
Wake up to rattle the world.

Your mines thrust down to the heart of the earth.
Your greased machines roll and turn
With a never ending fervor.
Our hands, our arms, our backs
Fuel your greedy machines.
Our blood shall one day rust
Your splendid machines.

Just like peacocks and princes,
So you strut about our land.
Our fathers roamed this land,
Strong and Free;
Now we crawl about as slaves
Carrying slave passes.

Hey Soweto.
We hear you.
Shake your chains sleeping giant.
Wake up to rattle the world.

Yes we hear the shadows of our past.
Footsteps after footsteps are rising
From their graves.
Should a dying man fear death?
Life is worth dying.
Death is worth living.
As resistance breeds torture;
So torture breeds resistance.
Never shall four million butchers
Forever enslave nineteen million warriors.

Arise brothers!
Our bones shall crumble
The mighty stones of Capetown.
Together, the many shall
Trample the few.
We don’t need to cry for justice;
We only need to make our justice.

Hey Soweto,
We hear you.
Shake your chains sleeping giant.
Wake up to rattle the world.
Another Farewell

Five sweet years
Both good and bad.
Now let us move on
To bury the past
And challenge the future.
Friends, we shall always be,
Whatever else, let fate decide.
Your silk comes from our nakedness.
Your table stands on our crumbs.
Your life depends on our death
Just like maggots around our grave.

Hey Soweto,
We hear you.
Shake your chains sleeping giant.
Wake up to rattle the world
Hey Soweto,
We hear you.
Shake your chains sleeping giant.
Wake up to rattle the world.

Fat farmers flushed with the cattle
Of our fathers,
Rich green fields grow around your gentry.
Harvests aplenty fatten your pens.
Yet only dust and starvation await our children,
As we crawl through your barren grounds
To feed on your gravel,
And live on your sand.

Hey Soweto,
We hear you.
Shake your chains sleeping giant.
Wake up to rattle the world.
Rich ocean ports sail your golden ships.