When arts rise...
Poetry
From The Children of the Camps and the Angels of Mercy by Richard K first published in k!3 February 09
The bright sun moves down the cloudless sky yet another day
Over the desperate eye of an expecting soul,
Its ominous heat burning the earth to red ash
And the whirls gathering the ash into dust.
The wind has not won the fight
To drive the red dust away,
Neither has the rain come trickling down
To cool the boiling souls to hope.
The expecting eye wanders away
To seek the face of an approaching visitor,
The heart runs but the lips remain tight
And oh, the silence!
The hardly covered bodies,
Their beginning-to-bulge bellies,
The scarcely-haired scalps,
The parentless kids,
The kidless parents,
The innumerable beads of mud shacks,
The numerable grains on infected floors,
The spectacle of searing hope under the Gulu sun!
Is it not a sad story?
The children are sick of the disdain,
The children wish to laugh again
And play and run home to warmth again,
But who has called their mercies forth,
And shaken their hands free,
To cradle the children to their breast
When they come running to them?
