LOCKED INDOORS

Indoors the blue bird stays
Like a bat in the day
When it must spread
Its colourful wings
Across the clear heavens
Like a star in cloudless night

Strength and vigour fills his veins
Industry and innovation
So full of immense wealth untapped
Acquired through tiresome study
In higher education to develop
His wings and attain his real blue colour

His place of abode lies in the
Grasses and shrubs and no more
The fruitful pear trees, cut
And in its place, many stores
And super markets patronized
By a few wicked people in pajeros
No shelter over his head, he has,
No break in an endless job hunt
From the appearance of the sun
To the moon, such an inheritance
For others like him competing a place
For a daily morsel under any tree.

Where are you, trained blue bird
Who can sing the melodious songs
Which would drive away
Like the pied piper of Hamelin
Our unquenchable thirst and hunger
Our engulfing illiteracy and waste
That plagues the poor on the dusty path?

Where are you selfless blue birds?
For butterflies are now homes as pest
And rats and cockroaches friends of man
…and they blame their ancestors
For not being brave and wise enough
For allowing into their abode, the white man.

Will we have the pear tree, when?
…the fruitful tree, when will it grow tall
When planted again? Our blue birds lie sorrowfully
And homelessly like a stranger in their own land,
Though a graduate, being sought for
In lands afar by numerous pear trees.