If you don’t see me in the parade today
Do not think I love my country less
I asked daddy for new shoes
and those white stockings
and belts with glittering buckles
Daddy merely shook his head
But manly tears betrayed his empty purse
he hasn’t gone to work in several months
since a thumb-stained retrenchment letter
scribbled away a job that was the centre
of the family life
Ravaging hunger has taken a permanent seat
in our crowded home
If you don’t see me in the parade today
Do not think I love my country less
I asked mommy for those green shorts
and lovely shirts we need for the gathering
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without which the teacher’s cane
would carve painful patterns
on my boney buttocks,
the resounding laughter of richer mates
biting through my tattered shirt
mommy merely showed me her fraying wrappa
and the empty carcass of her once brimming kiosk
now laid low by government’s emergency edicts
which caress the rich and kill the poor
Our country’s knife is sharp on the weak
and blunt on the strong
the more you steal, the less the crime
Powerful thieves buy justice
in the legal market, and purchase divine blessings
from saintly churches and holy mosques
If you don’t see me in the parade today
Do not think I love my country less
*First published in Songs of the Season; updated and re-used here with significant amendments.