Fathers

There is a house, half in ruins
At the other end of the village
Battered and ravaged by wind and rain
Half the walls lie prostrate
As in obeisance to an unseen god.
The mud roof has fallen through
The thatch roof cries for a layer
All the timber is rotten with age
And there is no gate or door
To cover the nakedness of that house
If only there was a father to build!

Read: Village Boy Impressions - Once A Giant Walked the Earth
  

There is a field down yonder
Where thick and tall weeds grow
And strangle the infant crop;
The millet is yellow and dwarfish, 
The corn is stunted and cobless, 

And the cowpea run podless, 
There is no hope for a harvest

All are accounted as forage

No blade to the sward is laid

For there is no father to till!

       

There is a boy and his sister in the city

Their beauty you must look hard to see

Their nostrils run like streams

Their nails are long and black

Flies and all insects go after them

They sleep in sight of the highway

Screeching tires and tooting horns

Their music by day and by night.

Both are pregnant without child!

Their coverings over-sized, and

Dyed with many shades and hues

But cannot cover all their sores.

They tramp the streets, dusk to dawn

For there is no father to provide!

Read: Village Boy Impressions - Unsung Heroines

  

They grow up but slowly

Each to his own devices

He is grimmy and heartless

A terror on that highway

He rapes and plunders for a living

And for herb and gin sold his soul. 

She lies with hounds and men

And bears a child before breasts

Littering the land with fetuses

Whose cries fill the air with dread

But she is long deaf and dead

For there was no father to guide!

       

A mother sits helpless beside

A shack half-eaten by mice

Sorrow and penury has withered

The once glowing dark obsidian skin.

Her sunken eyes no longer beamed 

Her ample bosom is shriveled

Her generous back long wasted

Her slender waist no longer swayed

Her lips are dry and unkissed

Her heart unloved, hips uncaressed

For there is no man, nay, no lover!
To protect that once admired beauty

Father is the sage and the seer
The guide, the guardian, the lover
The hands that make, that build, that till, 
That provide, that protect, that care

The shoulders that carry the load

The pillar upon which we lean 

The first love, the first hero

Who can make a father?