WILL NEVER VEER OFF

By the Sudanese Poet Muhiudeen Faris
Translated by Prof. Abdel-Rahman Mohamed, Ph.D.
Boston University, September 1983 in a Paper entitled
“Intellectual Dimensions of Revolutionary Awareness
And the Role of Intellectuals in Popular Mobilization”

WILL NEVER VEER OFF
I am not a trembling coward
Whose footsteps are restricted, as if by heavy iron shekels
I will never flinch nor veer off the path of struggle
While the swarms of victimized toilers
Are everyday returning home at the dimming nights
From factories and farm-fields; packing up roads
In the depth of their eyes are fathomless wounds and wilted glitter
Whispering in murmur
While the whips of an executioner are directing their footsteps,
"What are you doing?” chiding them rattles that
Dreadfully intimidating voice, like an abominable fate
During the inauspiciously gloomy darkness,
The mouths of jails continue to gape
Yet, they continue to mumble in muffled murmur,
“We are the Toiling Peoples”
There is a howling caravan in the labyrinths of times
Without a guide, blind and with lost destiny
Bare-footed, naked, hungry, homeless and vagabond millions walk
In the beneath, in the world of waste-dumpsters and ruins
Digging for food
While the fantasizing affluent are raucously laughing
Piercing the night in their saloons and universes of sinuous lust
Necks and breasts are glowing in matching to the blazing Jazz
Their green gambling tables overflow with wine and roses
Conflagrations of lust that surpass signs and limits
Do they hear the tumultuously roaring thunder?
Do they hear the clamorous rage of starving millions?
Tearing up the auditory receptors of the universe?
NO! They do hear nothing; for in the realm of unconsciousness they live
And like solidly deaf rocks they are
Tomorrow we will return, definitely we will return
To the luxuriant village
To the hut festooned with roses
We will march over the skulls of masters
With banners hoisted high
Our neighboring women will ululate
Children and the young will dance
Palm trees, willows and raddianas show ruddy fruits
Ears of wheat glowing in the fields and neighborhoods
We will never veer off the struggle´-or-deviate
Africa will come back to us
And harmonious melodies of the morning will return