D.I.S.A. CAMPAIGN
ECUADOR
- POETRY -

Ada Medina
Allyn Caravaglia
Anjana Basu
Annette Marie Hyder
Brian d'Arcy
César M. Morales
Claude Chuzel
Craig MacFarlane
Debjani Chatterjee
Durlabh Singh
Evelyn Cortez-Davis
Gene Keller
Gino D'Artali
Job Degenaar
Liza Di Georgina
Michaela A. Gabriel
Susan V. d'Artali
Tamara Lai
Usha Kishore
Zaida Lysle



Click here for the art

WHAT DO YOU KNOW?
© Anjana Basu - India

At 8 the streets are all you know,
the tinshack kiss of a hollow pipe
and that dark room which you call shelter,
five hundred or so, if you could count, huddled together,
under auntie’s whip,
fingers darting needles in and out of silk.

It isn’t much but there’s no rain
and the floor is clean
black marks on fabric mean no coins to carry home.
Ma waits with six sisters and an empty pot,
the youngest a baby rolling on a cardboard cradle.

The pot is hungry it wails for food.
You look at me with serious eyes pot black
that think what more is there to this?
You are an adult now, the earner of bread,
and all those soft swaddled things in cars and prams life’s toys.

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CHILD IS NOT

Child is not a chair
not foot
not body motion
not moving bricks in constant motion

Child is not a toy
not a game
but the last summer day
with stirring grass
the breath on a windless day

Child is not a top
to spin at will
not an eye or arm
not fingers moving back and forth
endlessly in dark and dust
or an upward stretch
to a loaded shelf to and fro and to

Child is not a whip
or a spinning wheel

Child is not a butterfly
Though both have wings
And life in rainbow dust

Child is not

____________________________________________

I SEE THEIR FACES IN YOUR EYES

Children grow green in the sun
like trees grow, and dreams
blue space breathes them in
and music in a sky filled dance
rain rocks them, flowers bloom
and shadows trace their leaf night place.
I see their faces in your eyes.