THE DARKER BROTHER



THE DARKER BROTHER 
 Find me Galen’s tomb and I will show you a white skeleton with a frown so deep...
 It speaks a thousand words.
Galen’s white skeleton lies in the contrasting black black trenches of the earth
Together with his ruthless comrade who whipped the Ethiopian’s back yesteryear.

The land that lies far beneath Ethiopia is the coast of gold.
It is filled with leopards whose black spots cannot be washed off.
It is impossible to wash an Ethiopian white.
 And the holy waters of the legendary Nile know full well.

The music my ancestors danced to has been forgotten so soon.
It is an illusion in the memory of your progeny.
But you say the world we live in today is an integration of both past and present;
 Old and new.
And yet, you look at my darker brother with a scornful repugnance
And spit on him with nauseating disgust.
You who uprooted him from the land where our mother held him with unflinching affection
Into an abyss of untold sufferance and gnashing of teeth.
Listen to the griots who sing of a scattered race.
A race of seeds that sprout among the descendants of those who whipped and those who lynched them.
Such brutality! Who is darker then? – Darker in mind, spirit and soul….darker in the heart.


Let this painful world be a ying yang
For in this world, there must be balance and unity
For all men, both black and white, light and dark, ying and yang
Cry in unison when scarred to the bone with a weapon.
Blood oozes from the same spot …in red red drops.
Brother- I am your darker brother.







    “The Ying-Yang Chinese symbol for unity and balance explains the law of the unity of opposites. It describes two sides of a mountain: the sunny side is the yang side and the shady side is the ying side. Thus, the single mountain can be either ying or yang, dark or light, hot or cold” – DR FIONA KELLEY
·         Aelius Galenus was also known as Galen of Pergamon (present day Turkey). He was a prominent Roman Physician, surgeon and philosopher who lived between AD 129 and C. 200 (www.galen.org). Galen after conducting some research on a black man described the whole black race as people with defective brains, smelly skin, and weakness in intelligence and full of merriment.
·         Ethiopia symbolises the black race

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