Rain threads through canvas cities where

children carve the confronting statue of hunger,

their fingers bloodied in the mud—each tent

a shape formed, each morning the sound

of hammers and chisels at work,

while somewhere diplomats shape

their own statue of progress

in conference rooms filled with dust and lies.

 

In these cities the flood surrounds the statue,

and the meagre daily bread is given as

as a quiet offering at the statue’s feet,

in the shadow of rubble that was once

a neighbourhood, once a life—and yes,

they say the bombs have stopped, as if silence

were salvation, as if the Wasteland doesn’t speak

its own brutal eloquence carved in stone.

 

Here the architecture of dispossession,

the weeping beauty of sodden tents,

creates the scene where hope itself becomes

contraband in the open-air prison filled with

the dust of other people’s forgotten promises,

and where God’s name is invoked by all sides

to justify the statue that reaches to heaven itself.

 

The rain keeps falling as the statue is made,

while the torn fabric of what we call

civilization, pools in the footprints

of those who queue for water, for flour,

for the simple dignity of being seen.

 

30/11/2025