djassô: poem
- Alberta N’Guessan
- Oct 7
- 2 min read
in my father’s tongue,
we say djassô
it means stand up.
djassô.
and did nationhood not die on parisian cobblestones, where my people traded the warmth of their mother tongues to survive.
djassô
the journey lives within us. the shrapnel, the scars, the sound of dawn breaking on our suffering.
djassô
for the day that should not have dared to rise again,
in the place where my continent bled, diseased with western corruption,
exhausted
Lumumba did speak. and I did not commit a sin in existing, that my blood should be a commodity to the white man.
how to tame anger,
djassô.
how to tame the sound of my screaming tongue.
how to taste justice, if my anger is not heard and death calls my name in every space.
see,
how fragments of assimilation still bleed inside me,
djassô,
because I don't know many words in my father’s language.
because hope is dwindling at the sight of us,
because relaxing your hair will not save you from your fate,
because filling your mouth with western sounds will not guarantee compassion.
djassô.
djassô.
djassô.
a certain fatigue weighs heavy on tired black bones. djassô,
you will die in the silence,
you will die in the blank space of inaction,
you will die in the false comfort of complacency.
did you not hear the wretched cry,
the sounding board of hope. djassô. my feet are planted firmly in the fight for liberation.
and they dare ask what radicalised me,
like they did not hear all the cues.
djassô.
We are tired of tombstones and manufactured silence, tired of bearing the echoes of the past they did not teach
in our bones,
the memories will not wilt inside of me,
I am too bitter to forget the shadow of mortality hanging over my life,
to forget that my very existence is resistance.
djassô,
whilst the tide is still flowing,
and the fight is not over.
djassô.
Edited by Hania Ahmed, Creative Editor
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