Being Made Whole - A Poem
What does it mean to ‘Be made whole’
when everything works to resist
your flourishing?
What does it mean
When systems and structures
designed to keep you in bondage,
perceive you
only as worthy of extraction
Violently at that?
What does it mean
to ‘Be’… made in the image and likeness of the creator
Yet man handled
like baggage
No ‘please’
or ‘thank you’
Just claims on our bodies,
our land
our names and
ways of being ?
To be
taken
without permission
For trade?
You trade Us
In your
Non- relational
Hyper Transactional
Economic way.
Did you count the cost while
treating us
Like a commodity?
Mere. Trans. Atlantic. Slaves
What does it mean to be made whole…
When you’ve had everything withdrawn from you
without being poured back into?
When you are only seen
(yet not seen)
as a resource?
Like a mysterious
library filled with beautiful words
and narratives – sealed in books
that you do not understand.
You know not how to read us…
We the mysterious
with secrets contained like
gold nuggets of wisdom and knowledge
these treasures
so mis-used
So misunderstood
that you
mis-handle
exploiting for your pleasure
Forgetting to handle the precious and divine
With care.
Lest memory seeks repair of the nations.
Let us sit down and reason (sup our Indian tea, with two lumps of brown sugar)
processed across oceans, by the Caribbean sea,
sweet cane sucked dry from the plantation.
At your service mam
Delivered 'safely’ to your door
Enjoy your coco filled chocolate biscuits
whilst reflecting on your genteel ways on these pleasant shores.
What does it mean to be made whole?
It’s easy to take, when the strategy involves telling the one you are stealing from that they are of no value.
Lies!
Easy to dehumanise the other,
as though it were all a game.
Telling us on the one hand that we are
all the same
worthless. lazy. animals.
whilst simultaneously severing us from
our indigenous ways
of being
So what does it mean
what does it mean?
When, these very acts
are perpetrated in the name of Christianity?
Telling the ‘least of these’
The global majority
to suffer much
for their own good –
and thank the ‘master’ very much
for his wrath!
For surely
In his eyes
we must remain
mute and unquestioning,
whilst this alien paternal system
governs
and reigns?
Oh!
Please answer, whilst
All creation groans
What does it mean
To be made whole?
Natasha Godfrey © 2024.