A poem for Youth Day — June 16th.

 

Stirrings in June

There, hung black and white

on that photo wall,

In the frosty air of museum halls,

Young Hector

is carried away from harm.

Like his sister, Antoinette,

I run

not from

Youth Day police rounds

with the hissing stench

of tear gas

reaching close behind,

but to

a horizon of revolt

where conformity

can be as harmful

as oppression education

taught from the blackboard.

I want to scream against establishment

as loud as those children on Soweto streets.

But, if not with my voice,

then with

my pen

sketching riots, barricades and protests

in the form of defiant prose.

Hoping, like that Generation of ‘76,

that a brighter dawn will rise

upon this midnight society of mine.