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Listen to Things
More often than Beings
Hear the voice of fire
Hear the voice of water
Listen in the wind
To the sigh of the bush
This is the ancestors breathing
Those who are dead are not ever gone
They are in the darkness that grows lighter

And in the darkness that grows darker
The dead are not down in the earth
They are in the trembling of the trees
In the groaning of the woods
In the water that runs
In the water that sleeps
They are in the hut,
They are in the crowd

**The dead are not dead.
An excerpt by Birago Diop
which can be found in the African Philosophy Reader (Coetzee & Roux 2003: 723)
I am no longer master of my time
Master of these greynesses of time
What flowers can I weave for Emmett Till

the child whose soul in mine
lies bleeding....

I die alone from pride
I leave to Emmett Till his death
from horror at myself
An excerpt written by Tchikaya U'Tamsi (Congo), which can be found in the African Philosophy Reader (Coetzee & Roux 2003: 725).

This piece reflects on the brutal death of Emmett Till, who passed away at the age of 14, at the hands of white brutality in a time where negritude and negation was still very rife in America.

— The End —