Ethiopia: The African and Africana

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Ethiopia is ancient and its Christian tradition and roots run deep, dating to 1st century C.E. Words from Psalm 68:31 (KJV), “Ethiopia shall quickly stretch out her hands unto God,” predate Christianity and affirm Ethiopian antiquity in the same vein as do words from Zephaniah 3:10 (KJV): From beyond the rivers of Ethiopia my suppliants, even the daughter of my dispersed, shall bring mine offering. Tsegaye Gebre-Medhin, Poet Laureate of Ethiopia who was elected to the United Poets Laureate International, captures in a poem entitled Nile that antiquity and Africana consciousness in modern times. Verse 1 and the first line of Verse 2 of Nile give credence to a continuous flow of ancient traditions, like the River Nile, from the past into the present: 

I am the first Earth Mother of all fertility.
I am the Source, I am the Nile, I am the African, I am the beginning!
O Arabia, how could you so conveniently have forgotten,
while your breath still hangs upon the threads of my springs?
O Egypt, you prodigal daughter born from my first love,
I am your Queen of the endless fresh waters,
who rested my head upon the arms of Narmer Ka Menes
when we joined in one our Upper and Lower Lands to create you!
O Sudan, born out of the bosom of my being,
how could you so conveniently count down
in miserable billions of petty cubic yards
the eternal drops of my life-giving Nile to you?
Beginning long before the earth fell from the eye-ball of heaven,
O Nile, that gushes out from my breath of life
upon the throats of the billions of the Earth's thirsty multitudes,
O World, how could you so conveniently have forgotten
that I, your first fountain, I your ever Ethiopia
I your first life still survive for you?

My name is Africa, I am the mother of the Nile.

(The Missing Slate, 2016)