Written by me in 2015 when Dylann Storm Roof murdered nine Afro-Americans in a church in Charleston. He was wearing a Rhodesian and South African flag on his jacket. Sadly the madness continues!
HEY MAN THE WHITE HOUSE ROOF HAS COLLAPSED
(With apologies to Felicia Hemans’ Casabianca)
The boy sat in the burning car
on the way to Beit Bridge*.
“Tell me, Mom, is it very far?
Are there cokes in the fridge?”
“The country hasn’t collapsed yet,
but it won’t take too long.
Remember son, please don’t forget,
your former country’s song.”
She said it as she stroked the flag
stuck to the car’s dashboard,
“Rhodesia ran just like our Jag
and not a clapped-out ford!”
It was thirty-five years later
he saw that flag again
adorning a racist hater
and now he felt the pain.
His parents were now both long dead,
their views had died with them
and he felt a terrible dread
lingering in his phlegm.
He remembered what bore that flag-
a tea towel on a tray
(not the dashboard of a Jag)
in San Francisco Bay.
He had cast off his parent’s ways
since coming to live here.
His life was full of brighter days
without a hint of fear.
For the most part they’d been quite fair,
not asking him to take part,
but the noblest thing which perished there
was that young faithful heart!
* Border crossing over the Limpopo River between Zimbabwe and SA.
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