The ink is redrawn on the parchment of kings, no longer shrunk small by an old sailor’s eye; the borders stretch out where the meridian swings, and the heartland claims back its true share of the sky. Yet the engines fall still on the avenue’s bend, where the green lights click off and the algorithms fade; the driver turns home at a sudden road’s end, left counting the cost of the currency paid. Up the Nile, through the dust, the gray shadows conspire, where the brass casings rattle and sorrow runs deep, fed by unseen hands that keep fanning the fire, while the river flows heavy and promises sleep. In the green mist of Tooro the drum beats its slow, solemn cadence for youth that the earth gathered in; a kingdom bends low in the valley below, where the songs of the ancestors softly begin. Deep down in the earth, the red gravel holds gold, tight-fisted and guarded against foreign tides, while the bean on the branch keeps the price it was told, and the ledger stays blind to the sweat that abides. Behind iron bars, silent voices remain, where the courtroom slammed shut what the public had spoken; and the streets of the south churn with anger and pain, where old ghosts of Sharpeville find treaties still broken. The parchment expands to the edge of the sea, unbroken, immense, in its rightful design— a continent waking, both burdened and free, living out all the truths that bleed through the line.
