You want papers?
What papers?
The aunt who eased me out of my mother’s womb
as the candle spluttered and died in the wind; she
couldn’t read or write. She knows I was born
on the day of the heaviest rains.
That is my birth certificate.
Will that do?
No, I don’t know the day,
or even the year when I was born.
It may have been fifteen years back,
Or sixteen
Time has little meaning for us , you know.
What?
Who are my parents, you ask?
That stone you see there?
That’s not a stone. That is my mother.
My mother who died giving birth to me.
My father, his father,
his father’s father,
his father’s father’s father,
our fathers, all the way to the first man-
We were all born here.
We belong here.
Every stone in this valley is us.
You want papers?
Why do I need papers?
This is my legacy.
These trees, these hills, these streams.
Every plant in the forest, every stone on the hills.
It is mine.
I don’t need no papers
This is my land.
The land of my forefathers.
The land where we’ve always lived.
The land where my children,
and grandchildren and great grandchildren will be born
Everything you see around me is mine.
These are my papers.
You cannot displace me from my land.
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