Cradle of Pulchritude

Cradle of pulchritude,
In the warm palms of creation
Here beauty first learned its name,
Humanity inhaled its first breath,
Skin kissed by the sun,
Feet rooted in sacred dust
Before the world learned to wander.

Nature adorns you without apology:
Rivers braid your hair with silver currents,
Mountains stand as ancient priests,
Forests chant hymns older than language,
Wildlife roams free,
Custodians of balance and breath.

Your surface is a generous mother,
Yielding basic necessities for the living
Harvest upon harvest from a single womb.
Your soil does not merely receive seed
It remembers it,
Nurtures it,
Returns it multiplied.

Beneath your skin,
The earth is pregnant with treasures:
Gold dreaming in silence,
Oil whispering beneath the rocks,
Diamonds learning patience in the dark,
Minerals without number
A wealth too vast for the greedy to count.

This is the womb of the human race,
A people so rare, so chosen,
That Eden was not abandoned
It was purchased with exile,
Carried in memory as man journeyed outward,
Seeking elsewhere what was born complete at home.

Not forgotten only ignored by those
Who fear the truth of origins.
Yet you stand,
Mother of mankind,
Bearing scars like crowns,
Waiting for your children
To remember who they are
And return
Not as strangers,
But as heirs

Author: OBIAJE Peter Edigah

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