Give me love,

I will give you bread and water to calm a bellowing gut
that despairs over rumours of drought.

Give me books,

I will give you clothes to comfort weather-beaten bones
bruised by the cold bite that grinds humour dry.

Give me music and dance,

I will give you soap to scrub tired hands gashed by a barren soil
that once fed a village mocked for their jolly bellies.

Give me art,

I will give you local beauty, a muse excused from love,
bartered in a bar brawl to fill a father’s empty pockets.

Give me a bed,

I will give you visions to nurture a starving imagination
wounded by the isolation of a land and its apocalypse.