You see the world through eyes that know,

Eyes that drops make clear to see farther.

What you and I reel in is all first hand.

This to us by experience is real.

Gun shots, vehicles on fire and tear gas in dirty streets

Play deadly on domesticated video screens.

Somewhere people scream or lie to sleep starved.

Africa, we say, if asked, is where the noose is tight,

Though our minds are blind to the black man’s plight.

Nowhere is war felt worse than in the calloused hearts of men.

Freedom is for the young, we say, and shake our heads in dismay.

For it’s they whose faces we see when the bugle blows last.

© Lennard Pierson

3 February 2012