Numbered like animals
Before the slaughter
From Birkenau to Auschwitz

What do our own
Gangsters know?
Instead they
Take pride in a number

2088
Is the number
Of pages in my gift
A dictionary

Courtesy of the Dollies
Abdia and Shaheed
From the local Oaklands High
Past but ever present

2088 pages
I parade it
At the old school
Belthorn Primary
To Site C and back

At a Reading Competition
At the Moses Mabhida Library
I teasingly ask
An educator to spell
Discombobulate
Or is it disconbobulate?
I jest further
Discombobulate
Is on page 494

A 2088-page dictionary
What more could one
Want in life?

I flaunt a shiny-new worldly possession.
Holocaust survivor Eugene Zinn
Is my ‘number’ reference
(‘Auschwitz – a survivor’s tale’
In the Sunday Argus, May 15, 2005).