Manifesto of Sorts

Found while reading the book of Langston.  Hermes, master of the crossroads, works in the library and points you to other volumes.

Guinea
Translated by Langston Hughes


It's the long road to Guinea
death takes you down.
Here are the boughs, the trees, the forest.
Listen to the sound of the wind in its long hair
      of eternal light

It's the long road to Guinea
where your fathers await you without impatience.
Along the way, they talk.
They wait.
This is the hour when the streams rattle
      like beads of bone.

It's the long road to Guinea.
No bright welcome will be made for you
in the dark land of dark men.

Under a smoky sky pierced by the cry of birds
under the eye of the river
     the eyelashes of the trees open on decaying light.
There, there awaits you beside the water a quiet village,
and the hut of your fathers, and the last ancestral stone
     where your head will rest at last.