Performed by Val Cole

Dedicated to the Unknown Woman
Listen to the drums
Echoing through the valley
See the demons fly
through the night

Hear the old woman
Cry out with fright
As a young woman is stripped bare…
Violated, beaten and bruised
She lays
With unseeing eyes
All she hears
Are the silent screams
Inside her head.

Oh Africa
Land of my birth
What has become of you?
There is no joy
There is no mirth -
So she sighs
And walks down to the riverside
To wash away
The stains
She sees inside her head

Her soul, her heart
Don’t you know
Her spirit feels dead!
The water is cold
Deep and wide
and
it calls her
it embraces her life
And it swallows her soul
Mother! Father!
It
is
finished…

She is… dead

The drums echo mournfully through the valley
The demons chuckle with delight
The old woman wails
and cries
and sighs
As another daughter of Africa
…dies

© Sharmaine Anna Dobson