SONG OF A GENERATION

 As we go singing

 he song of initiation

 We see with your eyes

 And hear with your ears.

 Now we are on our way

 Only to find we no longer see

 With your eyes, but with our eyes

 We no longer hear with your ears,

 But with our ears.

 Consulting the map

 And how he chooses guides

 Who slouch and shuffle on the way to lead

 We hear them laugh

 At our dreams, those guides

 Who cause us to be seen, not heard,

 Who put baskets of rotten fruits

 On our heads.

 And we find nothing,

 Just the ashes of bygones days,

 The bones of those

 Who arrived before us,

 And we sit day after day

 Watching the wind blow our

 Dreams away into nothingness.

 STATE OF THE NATION

The sun emerges

From between the clouds,

The dawn of a new day

This dawn of a new day

The sun slowly fades away.

Thieves, murderers and jungle crooks

Slowly head back to their hideouts.

But the dawn is still shrouded in mist.

‘It is difficult to tell man from beast.’

Crouching in our ramshackle dwellings

Dare we plunge

Into the mist – shrouded dawn?

Dare we trust

To the slowly fading darkness?

Where we cannot tell

Man from beast?

And so burrowing

Under our bed-covers

With fearful hope

And bathed breath

We wait:

For the slowly fading darkness to fade.