Rashid Pelpuo writes

WE HAVE COME THIS FAR

I
We have come this far
Beating back our fears
Against our failings
In triumphant postulate

It was a struggle to take back our souls
Lost in the tongues of our adversaries
And those who never were our heroes
But sought to steal our gains
From our innocence

The stakes went high
The ambience of state power
Coiled around our sweaty bodies
Attempting to break our spines
In the familiar world of our longings
And push us into ignominious ditches

II
It is good reason to conjure a cure
For the many who seek comfort in misery
To rise and join the brave urge
To the common chorus
That we will never live in unresolved misery

We recount in those journeys to liberty
In the sacred woods of vast opinions
We planted the seeds of unity
And vied to win vacillating ideas
And we won the glory of the crown

We repossessed our minds and hopes
From the passion greed
Of men who sold their essence
And walked in empty shells
In naked self-destruction

III
Knowing where we come from
We have traveled far
We have cured the times
We have beaten off all the dews
We have made the paths passable

We have engineered a reinvented self
We have reclaimed our minds
We have found a new genotype of hope,
And we have ground our fears away in furnaces
To build a new nation and a prosperous people

In the logic of space conjoined time
We are touching the flame of change
As yesterday’s brave men now watch
In compelling acquiescence
To irreversible tides sloughing a new world

Let’s cure ourselves
Of haughty minds
Who see no wrong
In hailing devious haggards
To wrought foul our glorious gains

Let’s redefine success in the cauldrons
Of boiling ideas in superior attitudes
Let’s create a conscious world
Where we can be sure
When the sun rises and sets

Let the truth be told that
This urge to win is no vain venture
It smothers avarice mercilessly
It severs every gaping hunger and squalor
It blossoms in enduring law and order


 
-- Jia Sung