Rainbow Vision
Sad story of a star thrown up above;
Grand guide it hangs, a beacon way up high.
Embodied in the figure of a dove,
Madiba & Tutu’s canvas was the sky.
Divine this land, a claim to nest of life.
Melting pot of culture, custom, lore;
Connect, invent, a shot — potential rife.
There is a path the future has in store.
But please, tread softly, oh! Don’t let it break;
A nation’s aspiration on a thread.
People hanging on in regimes’ wake,
To stare the face — starvation up ahead.
And those with means, a duty must be borne;
For else it is a homeland we will mourn.
*** An attempt at writing a Shakespearean Sonnet. This poem is about South Africa—which was marketed as the ‘Rainbow Nation’ — but which currently faces a triple threat of rampant poverty, inequality, and unemployment, in addition to the global COVID-19 pandemic and attempted insurrection by factions loyal to the county’s corrupt former president***
