Three Phases of Africa III Every Valley Shall be Exalted By Frank Parkes

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Three Phases of Africa 

III Every Valley Shall be Exalted

By

Frank Parkes

Every valley shall upright stand 

Earth's lowly ones shall rise

In black renascence.

Let us burn bibles for incense

The rejected babe 

Drowns in the man-made ravine 

Storm-beaten, sun-scorched, fleeced 

Out-dooring the star of the east?

They that ride 

White asses

Shall roll in the debris of destruction 

Their mind did fashion

Their banquet halls are doom 

In ghosts awake

Their tabernacles of gold

Shall find their joyless grave.

Those that grope the sidewalks

Shall find resurrection

In crumbs of fulfilment

Those that chew oppression's bitter corn 

Shall reap earth's joys

Their sweat did water

And mud huts raise 

Above the rubbish heaps

Of yesteryear's cathedrals.

But they that from their hills of greed 

Did scorn the toils of earth. 

Shall moan by empty gravesides 

At the trumpet of awakening

For the new dawn has broken

The upright palm goes to his farm 

The mighty are no more

Cassocks are no more 

Sceptres no more.

The palm gives of its wine 

At the sacramental font.

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