The Talents' Thief Poem by Thabani Khumalo

Mother! please come look and see.
Look what treasure I have found in the dirt:
A clay-pot filled with stars of gold
I'll wait for day to go sell it far.

The odds on me - I won't make it far
For there is a man lurking out in my way,
He carries tools not for digging the gold for which he so longs
But tools to maraud all hard working man.

Peer into that darkness and you shall see a figure
Same as your taste for that is the man you fornicated,
So he knows me for he saw me when I was asleep and not looking back
And had no much terror of looking into wide-open eyes.

There is a big man who knows that I carry the stars of gold
So he will wait to hear me close in before he pounces like a lion,
He will take away the gold before he takes a different destination
Where he will go look into the face of another sleeping child
Before he lurks in their way to bath them in their blood
And again take from them their pot of clay
By huge weapons - big enough to kill a hard working man.

The odds on me - I won't make it far
For I am but a little boy and you taught me not how to fight a man.