We have no stereos
Droning love ballads
To lull us from our reality
The only music we
Know is the wordless symphony
Of the buzzing stars
The bright eye of the night
Candles our hope
We don’t know
Various shades
Of lamps and globes but
We know the colour
Of the moon
The only show
Our eyes can
Afford us is
The flaunt
Of the rising sun &
The display
Of the falling night

***

Think of furious clouds
When you scoff
At our unkempt hair
We have no conditioners
We breathe the air
As pure as it is
Or as dirtied
As industrial filth
& human greed
Spews refuse to us

***

Above our heads
There is no ceiling
To confine our home
To some territory
The whole earth is our house
The entire universe is
The habitat of our dreams
Our roof the open sky
Tell us of no limit
We squat with antelopes
In the grass & hop
With frogs in dongas
We snore with crickets
On the roadside
& fly with birds
In our dreams
We are swallows
In our imaginations
We are friends to rain
In our guts we are eagles
We prey on your waste
We land on your dustbins
Call us scavengers
We eat what you eat
We are what you feed us
We pounce on your leftovers
We clear your debris
We clean up your mess
We are the décor on city pavements
You dust up your conscience
With a show of sympathy
Every surplus cent
You throw at us
Give you pleasant dreams

***

We are the eye-sore
Of suburban bliss
We are the toast
Of welfare programs
We are the facts & lifeblood
Of relief projects
We are the sights
Of tourism
The statistics
Of academia
The subjects of research
We are part of the discourse
We are in the theories
An integral part of the subaltern
We are quoted among the wretched
We are mentioned among the damned
We are stated among the poors
We are cited among the marginalised
We are part of the terminology
We nourish the development discourse
We feed the machine
The beast thrives on us
We are in the text books
We are not the authors
We don’t know about copyrights
We are the subjects
We are the toast of politics
We are in the economics
We are in the songs
We feed the poetry
We are in the paintings
We are in the photographs
We are the subject of art
We feature in the films
We are not film stars
We don’t know about royalties

****

We have no stereos
Droning love ballads
To lull us from our reality
The only music we
Know is the wordless symphony
Of the buzzing stars
The bright eye of the night
Candles our hope
We don’t know
Various shades
Of lamps and globes but
We know the colour
Of the moon
The only show
Our eyes can
Afford us is
The flaunt
Of the rising sun &
The display
Of the falling night

* Mphutlane wa Bofelo is author of 'The Way of Love - Poetry and Reflections inspired by Rumi and Other Sufi Poets', 'Bluesology and Bofelosophy - essays and poems', 'The Heart's Interpretor', 'Remembrance and Salutations', and 'The Journey Within: Reflections in Ramadan'.