There’s the library
chortling arms a-flailing
a school colleague exclaims
she youngish and bookish

(she reads whatever
I pass on to her
without a grumble)

a fine role model she is
(as you know they are few
and quite far in between)

a Hanover Park citizen
a place where bullets fly
as children go to school
to learn something
despite and sometimes
even because of school

There’s the library
(roughly decrypted from
Afrikaaps to Englikaaps)
Lansdowne Library it is
the subject of our tête-à-tête

you can’t not see it now
painted an unmissable green
lime she corrects me
(as I claim it is vomit-green)

Lansdowne Library closed
for maintenance for 3 months
in an epoch where illiteracy
is rife seemingly everywhere

(along my merry way a user
despairing hands thrown up
enquires about its re-opening
ironically I came from a Friends meet)

There’s the library
for all of us to hear
for the love of books
for the love of reading
for the love of libraries too

Daar’s die library