Page 6 - SAASTA YSCC Poetry Book

Verlorenvlei Lost –

Questions for My Father

You promised that the stories were true,
You said that everything would be there.
The birds and plants and life of the sandveld,
Now there is nothing here.

After years of excuses I have finally come,
Along the west coast to the ‘Verlorenvlei’.
To a place that is now empty and forgotten,
It truly is the ‘lost vlei’ as they say.

Was it lost naturally,
Or is it the way of man?
To take water from its source,
It’s only us who can.

You told me to remember her name,
Mother earth, indalo, provider for all.
Yet we took this ‘all’ to mean ‘just us’,
Has this been our greatest fall?

Her water used for our crops and plants,
Every last drop we pumped from her ground.
But mother nature has no say,
It’s in ourselves that preservation is found.

I wish that I had seen it,
The heritage that was to be mine.
But it was always ‘not our problem’,
Now my childhood stories have been lost to time.

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