sounds of township awakening
reaches numbness of frozen sleep
graveyard his playground
of reminder's loss and past embrace
he too will surrender life’s intended fullness…
Author notes
Township: Locality in which many SA Blacks live.
This poem was promted by what my wife told me when she visited a township to provide children with their weekly soup and bread lunch. She found children playing the graveyeard, and aksed them why they are playing there. They told her that their parents are buried there!
The UNAIDS / WHO estimate that:
• by end of 2006 - 2.3 million children will be living with HIV around the world
• of which more than half a million will became newly infected with HIV during 2006
• and that 2.9 million people who died of AIDS during 2006, more than one in ten were children – this translates in forty children per hour dying of AIDS and Aids-related complications
UNIAIDS / WHO. December 2006. Aids epidemic update.
SA HIV & Aids Statistics.
In a list
A contest entry
- Blank Cheque by sca.
777 points, ended November 1, 2007, 48 entries
• next poem in this contest, remove from contest
Please tell me what you think
Comments
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Pain doesn't let go even though the wound is inevitable. I have a colleague who goes every weekend to bury another friend or family-member, usually a victim of HIV/AIDS. Dear God - this is not an epidemic - its a WAR - and here you've spoken so eloquently of one of the battlegrounds. For a moment cunningly disguised as a playground until your words reveal the true horror. Their innocence is as buried as the bodies of their parents. You have held up a light to this hideous battle.
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A very thought provoking write this, very eerie images, one to ponder on. Well done and thanks for entering my contest,
Floorboards.
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