Poets

we were not the only ones left; the fig-tree stood by us. we were not the only ones left until the sky refused us a visa. sweet dreams, dear as we wait for another flower to bloom.

When, brother, will you be? How will you be? For you are not yet. A ‘boy' you are called by milk-plastered lips and you undo your hat to bare that musty dome. Yet a ‘boy' you remain. Your unpensioned thirty-year job - unpensioned even in kind - you have faithfully groomed, while bosses go and come, renewing that boyishness, inheriting you and the garden, but ever ‘boy', never ‘man'. Maybe a bigger garden will turn you to a field-man. Did you tell your boss you have fathered, husbanded like him? Does he know your son lectures to professors in exile? Booted on ancient buttocks by weak-boned madams who rob your humility implanting slavery and hate. Even yoking you with manufactured allegiances, yet your blood-left rhythm speaks When history chapters allow.

i am the only one you are the only one. the birds and the rivers sing to me, they speak in your voice. if i fall silent you will be silent too. if i fall silent your wounds will be named silence. i am a piece of you and you are a piece of me. the blood in my veins is you. listen to the rhythm of the stream of my blood and the echoes from the hills, mixed with gentle ripples of the waters in the fast stream. but with time you will hear your voice in the blue skies of my heart. in the dark clouds of my soul you will hear a voice that tells the story of your forgotten voices of birds long dead of elephants crippled by guns of orphans you do not deserve.