Occupying Mumia’s Cell

(Copyright © 2011 by Alice Walker)

I Sing of Mumia
brilliant and strong
and of the captivity
that
few black men escape
if they are as free
as he has become.
 
What a teacher he is for all of us.
 
Nearly thirty years in solitary
and still,
Himself.
 
He will die himself.
A black man;
whom many consider to be
a Muslim, though this is not
how he narrows down
the  criss-crossing paths of
his soul’s journey.
Perhaps it is simpler
to call him
a lover of truth
who refuses
to be silenced.
Is anything more persecuted
in this land?
 
No boots will be allowed
of course
so he will not
die with them on;
but there will always be
boots
of the mind and spirit
and of the heart and soul.
 
His will be black and shining
(or maybe the color of rainbows)
and they will sprout wings.
 
Mumia
they have decided
finally
not to kill you
hoping no blood will
stain their hands
at the tribunal
of the people;
but to let you continue
to die slowly
creating and singing
your own songs
as you pace
alone,  sometimes terrorized,
for decades of long nights
in your small cage
of a cell.
 
We lament our impotence: that we have failed
to get you out of there.
 
Your regal mane may have thinned
as our locks too, those flags of  our self sovereignty, may even have
disappeared;
waiting out this unjust sentence,
until we, like you, have become old.
Still,
if you will: accept our gratitude
that you stand, even bootless,
on your feet.  We see
that few of those around us,
well shod and walking, even owning, the streets
are freed.
 
Somehow you have been.
 
Enough to remind us
of freedom’s devout
internal and
ineradicable seed.
 
What a magnificent Lion
you have been all these
disastrous years
and still are,
indeed.