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Vanity If we tell, gently, gently All that we shall one day have to tell, Who then will hear our voices without laughter, Sad complaining voices of beggars Who indeed will hear them without laughter? If we cry roughly of our torments Ever increasing from the start of things, What eyes will watch our large mouths Shaped by the laughter of big children What eyes will watch our large mouths? What heart will listen to our clamouring? What ear to our pitiful anger Which grows in us like a tumour In the black depth of our plaintive throats? When our Dead come with their Dead When they have spoken to us with their clumsy voices; Just as our ears were deaf To their cries, to their wild appeals Just as our ears were deaf They have left on the earth their cries, In the air, on the water, where they have traced their signs For us, blind deaf and unworthy Sons Who see nothing of what they have made In the air, on the water, where they have traced their signs. And since we did not understand our dead Since we have never listened to their cries If we weep, gently, gently If we cry roughly of our torments What heart will listen to our clamouring, What ear to our sobbing hearts? — Birago Diop
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Nice one I have a good time reading it ????????
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[…] Poetry is written in lines, verses and stanzas. The National anthem of every country is not in the prose or play genre of literature, it is a typical example of poetry everywhere you go. My favourite poems are much, one of them is Birago Dipo’s “Vanity”. […]