Roots Beneath the Dust

Verse 1: A map drawn in minerals, etched into the soil, where once the green stood tall. Copper bled, gold gleamed, history folding over itself, a new face, the old still breathing. Verse 2: Crops whispered of hunger, of earth that gave and took. But oil spoke louder, a black river running, pulling men from the fields, like a promise never kept. Chorus: Africa shifts in silence, between hands and hearts. What was grown is buried, what is mined has no root, only weight and dust. Verse 3: Diamonds flickered in the sun, but what of the hands that held them? The land— scarred, its pulse faint beneath machines. Progress, they called it. Verse 4: The copperbelt stretched like muscle, once worn and tired. But the veins of iron and coal, they do not forgive. They wait, quietly, for the reckoning. Chorus: Africa shifts in silence, between hands and hearts. What was grown is buried, what is mined has no root, only weight and dust. Verse 5: Now minerals rise, like monuments, while the soil forgets the taste of seeds. What was planted— cannot return, but the earth remembers, still.