INNER THOUGHTS

INNER THOUGHTS

INNER THOUGHTS

Where the mountain climbs
Nations rise up in defiance
And monuments are erected;
The aftermath of an achievement.
Celebration for the revolution
That has given way to liberation
That holds nationalism.
Faces painted no more in war colours
But in colours of the earth
Of their being.
The gun discarded,
The drum
And the guitar embraced,
The poet speaks,
The singer sings,
The scholar documents,
To tell the future what was the past
And hope half-heartedly
That it remains so.
Love is shared in a cup for all to sip.
At the mountaintop
Where the newly freed stood,
By the mountainside
Where small fires burned.
Heralding a new dawn,
A new day.
Oh sweet love,
How so sweet when memories cling.

Where the mountain ends
The horizon remains the same,
Betraying memory,
Betraying truth.
This horizon where hopes were raised
For the return of a son
And a daughter
From the bush.
This same horizon where a man stared
And believed that after his death
All would be fulfilled.
Where a woman stared
And waited for freedom to come
But freedom never came
Where the village stands solitary.
Where echoes have ceased to be.
Where is freedom?
Where is justice?
Promises beside fires cling no more,
All that remains is the open history books
To tell the present what was the past,
History books that bear page upon page
Of a history
Which we and the future
Fail to understand.
Freedom is forgotten from memory
And from truth, for now.

Oh sweet,
Sweet love,
When memories of hope cling
To the lives of the discontented
And less hopeful.