ethiopia

you're a place on some map,
on some student's globe
somewhere

television news confirms
people reside within you,
in some
arid & destitute experience

some kingship, some colonial power
named you long ago,
gave you an identity for some
erstwhile mapmaker

before this, you were a place
just like any other place:
human beings
organizing themselves
in survival against nature

& further before this,
geneticists proclaim,
you were
the first home to man,
on pangea, land of earth

it seems
you hosted the first human
tribe, that your resources gave
nourishment & form,
then your bravest
left for mysterious shores,
multiplying, traversing
the world

they changed colour,
they changed language
they settled & became
provincial

the memory of your crucible
faded, so that today
no one recalls your
function

if the world is a flowering bush
with exotic & disparate
flowers, then
the trunk of this bush is africa
& the roots are ethiopia

the seeds of our existence
had to germinate somewhere:
northerly, southerly, easterly,
westerly

by mysterious force
they found your locale

our bloodlines tell the story -
all paths lead to you

you are our center
our undeniable fact

you are the wellspring
of humankind, not
an insignificant thing

do arabs & jews, chinese &
japanese, russians & americans,
pakistanis & indians,
british & french, algerians & germans,
lithuanians & poles,
brooklynites & manhattanites

know that you are the
motherland, and also
the fatherland?

& that nations
act like mere quarreling children,
dividing the world of self
into non-self?

ethiopia -
rally your children
before they yet roil the earth!

ethiopia -
make yourself
known!