Revelations: Africa in Poetry

Street Kid

74 Street Kid It has been a long fruitless day Toiling from one side of the street to the other But getting hardly enough To quench the thirst that burns my throat And satiate the hunger that haunts me all life Street kid is my name No sister No brother No mother Worse a father My house all street The sun my only friend now vacates Leaving me in the open Me the son of the street, Street kid Prepared not to meet its sister, Cold night That asks birth certificates even to me son of the street And I tell her: ‘I am Street kid pardon me’ Yet unforgiving she is Born there in the street My mother unknown diamond-hearted woman My father unknown I don’t care I have nothing to claim Except this hopeless life 75 And bruised body Full of all kinds of wounds- fresh, dry, soaring and healing All on one body Seated there watching A mother and a father with their child in between I wish I were born of a woman Loving and caring And of a father Responsible and feeling For mine is not life That any man deserves Or wish to live any single moment Only if wishes were horses! ...