Sunday, March 24, 2013

Forgotten Country



I stand by a tree in the playground
of a deserted primary school.
One of thousands that education emptied.
Contraception, emigration
left the land with a wound
that may never heal.
The sound of laughter
torn from the heart.

These thoughts jar.
I kick the sand on the path,
my mind stirred.
The sadness of desertion
cannot be disguised.
.
I walk, there is no hurry,
across the valley
where the barefoot children
of yesterday, ran,
thinking of the stories children made
dying in the mouths of those
who stayed.

(disguised, forgotten, country, hurry, tree, wound, mind, sand, stirred, jar, across, yesterday)


14 comments:

  1. WOW! okay then, a very trivial comment for a poem of enormous magnitude - but I was this early Sunday morning quite blown away (another trite but true feeling) by this poem of barefooted children ... gone..

    Brilliant ! Bravo!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Education has a lot to answer for...

    ReplyDelete
  3. An intensely sad poem that disguised the wordle words so that I forgot them.

    I wonder if you mean "emigration" rather than "immigration", which fills schools rather than emptying them!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Oh yes, quite right. Emigration has filled the schools of other countries. There are large Portuguese communities all over the world, and Portuguese is the 2nd or 3rd most spoken language in the world!
      Thanks for your good words.

      Delete
  4. Wow..I can feel that walk and those thoughts.

    ReplyDelete
  5. dying in the mouths of those who stayed...
    Wow. Strong write.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Powerful, pertinent, while being both personal and political. Brava!

    Elizabeth

    ReplyDelete
  7. For every improvement we think we make in life we seem to take a step backwards and lose something precious. Your piece is a poignant reminder of this.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Gosh, sadness fills me Veronica, because I go back to my childhood in the Czech Republic and then escape and returning for the first time twenty years later. The sadness of those who remained thru those harsh years of communism. Unforgettable. loved your whirl because I love it when I can connect to a piece so easily. Well done you. :)

    ReplyDelete
  9. That has a real underlying sadness to it.

    ReplyDelete
  10. here in the U.S. where immigration is such a hot topic
    we seldom give a thought to the effects of emigration
    on the homelands

    thank you for this view
    sad and enlightening

    Cheers!
    JzB

    ReplyDelete
  11. A very sad poem, Veronica. Well written.

    Pamela

    ReplyDelete
  12. Thank you for reading my words :)

    ReplyDelete
  13. `the sadness of desertion cannot be disguised' - so sad, a beautifully written piece.

    ReplyDelete