THE SONG OF AN ETHIOPIAN
CHILD
Raghavendra M. V.
As I woke up daily,
My mother said...
“Plant a seed,”
before I washed my face, or urinated.
Daily I did so, watering the seed with my body’s waste.
It grew into pumpkins.
We ate and gave them to all and my mother said ‘God is great!’
Then came the drought.
Yet my mother said,
“Plant daily” ...
Which I did
But I couldn’t water, for the drought was in my intestines too...
I looked meekly at the buried seeds and the naked sky.
I heard announcements...
‘Grains rushed for help’
Some said, “It was as well,
Instead of rains there came grains”...
But I looked for neither,
And said “One doesn’t exist and the other can’t last.”
And my mother replied,
“It is all Nature’s curse.”
As I hated these words only,
With red eyes and a burning heart
This time I looked, deep into the bowels of the parched earth,
And found a sapling half green and half dry...
Of the self-same seed that I planted,
Which refused to die...
It mocked at me.
As it nodded its slender head,
It stirred in me
The embers of confidence.