Poverty and Power
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After visiting Lesotho, the kingdom in the sky, in the Drakensberg mountains and seeing for myself the desperate poverty and the high numbers of adults and children dying from HIV/AIDS, I wrote this and went to a studio to record it hoping that it might be used to raise awareness and or funds. Sadly it never did. The 'wind' music is provided by Drew Downing in his Surbiton studio This is intended to be a hard hitting poem and yet the Country has a stark beauty and the people are wonderfully warm and welcoming despite the daily tragedies they are living. Down the Sani Pass into South Africa it is almost as serious a problem.
https://www.opendrive.com/files/ODBfMTU3MzM4N19HTVN2Q.
Do you know a child
That will get up to play?
What if they died before tonight?
In the third world children are piled,
Thousands of them die every day,
Poverty is their daily plight.
Do you care?
Do you fight?
For you have the power,
You know it can't be right
So many 'buds' don't flower.
Do you have a fridge
That is filled with food?
Unlikely our children will starve,
If we all linked hands, built a bridge,
Wiped out their debts as a prelude,
By that act the dying might halve.
Do you have a home
That is safe, snug and warm?
How would you feel if it fell down?
Bloodied, children’s feet have to roam,
Around their eyes and mouths flies swarm,
Obscene to them must seem a jewelled crown.
Do you care?
Do you fight?
For you have the power,
You know it can't be right
So many 'buds' don't flower.
Do you have a mind?
Will you stand and say no,
That no more will needlessly die?
Do your utmost to help mankind,
Use your power, make it not so,
Face their truth, stem the tears they cry?
Do you have a child
Could you stand, watch them die,
Knowing that they could have been saved?
Could you carry on, not feel wild,
Look other children in the eye,
Not by a 'white' lie be enslaved?
Do you care?
Will you fight?
For you have the power,
You know it can't be right
So many 'buds' don't flower.
Please fight endlessly,
Use entrusted power?
Make poverty history,
Help all those 'buds' to flower.
Make poverty history,
Help all those 'buds' to flower.
Copyright © Mavis Jackson | Year Posted 2017
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