POEM - NILE

POEM - NILE by Tsegaye Gebre-Medhin, a poet, playwright, translator, essayist, and art director was also Poet Laureate of Ethiopia and elected to the United Poets Laureate International.

Nile
I am the first Earth Mother of all fertility.

I am the Source, I am the Nile, I am the African, I am the beginning!

O Arabia, how could you so conveniently have forgotten,

while your breath still hangs upon the threads of my springs?

O Egypt, you prodigal daughter born from my first love,

I am your Queen of the endless fresh waters,

who rested my head upon the arms of Narmer Ka Menes

when we joined in one our Upper and Lower Lands to create you!

O Sudan, born out of the bosom of my being,

how could you so conveniently count down

in miserable billions of petty cubic yards

the eternal drops of my life-giving Nile to you?

Beginning long before the earth fell from the eye-ball of heaven,

O Nile, that gushes out from my breath of life...

https://allaboutethio.com/20-must-read-poems-of-ethiopia-best-ethiopian-poetry.html

upon the throats of the billions of the Earth's thirsty multitudes,

O World, how could you so conveniently have forgotten

that I, your first fountain, I your ever Ethiopia

I your first life still survive for you?

I rise like the sun from the deepest core of the globe.

I am the conquoror of scorching pestilences.

I am the Ethiopia that "stretches her hands in supplication to God".

I am the mother of the tallest traveller on the longest journey on Earth!

My name is Africa, I am the mother of the Nile.

O Nile, my prodigal daughter in the wilderness of the desert,

bringing God's harmony to all brothers and sisters

and calming down their noises of brass in their endless nakednesses,

O Nile, you are music that restores the rhythm of existence