JEREMIAD: "TONGUES OF BABYLON" BY J.M SAVANNAH

They were issued names,

Saggy like borrowed uniforms

Creased,starchy and foreign

Stitched with alien deities

The city called it affiliation,

Ink replaced ancestry

A syllable herehere,a deity there,

Identity edited for ease of rule

They learned the grammar of exile,

spoke it without accent

Ate bread blessed on other altars,

Worked beneath murals of borrowed heavens

Yet, no one asked them to believe,

Only to bend

The jingles crescendoed,

horns,flutes, bureaucratic thunder

Sounds designed to synchronise spines,

To school the body coherence

before the mind could object

Knob knees became paperwork,

Compliance filed in rows

Faith reduced to posture

They stood

Not loud

Not defiant

Simply vertical,

As if gravity itself

had been reviewed for them alone

"We are able",they chorused,

not as a bargain

not as insurance against flame,

but a refusal to let survival,

be a yardstick of truth

And even if not,

even if the fire kept insatiable appetite,

they wouldn't rehearse a lie

with their bones

So,Babylon learned,

what it least anticipates

that a man may answer to another name

and still belong elsewhere,

That power may rename the mouth

but not the knee,

that fire recognises integrity,

before recognising flesh.

© J.M SAVANNAH INKS

-Zimbabwe

This poem, "Tongues Of Babylon", is a powerful critique of colonialism and cultural suppression. It explores the forced imposition of foreign identities, languages, and beliefs on a people, highlighting their resilience and defiance. The tone is reflective, powerful, and quietly resistant.