Azanian Love Song

No children

Azanian Love Song 75 No children There are no children Hippos, guns still stalk The silent streets; Blood, pain Nurture an uncaring anger No children in Soweto, Langa, Mannenberg, Not a child left in Sharpeville Dead Jailed Crippled Blinded Tortured, yes The children have all become adults And so, let no-one lament Those unlived, lost summers Nor weep for the shadows That once were children Laughing in the sand Let us not walk too gently When we pass their graves Our footsteps must stir their sleep The dead must learn to talk The living learn to die  76 Don Mattera Jesus hymns fill the townships: ‘Fast falls the eventide’ And queues of mourning mothers Search for slain children ‘When other helpers fail . . .’ But death can lift a man It can reshape a trembling people And replenish it with purpose, Give it new life Let no black man weep Let no white man weep There is purpose in death ...