You Say A Lot But Say Nothing Poem by Mpho Leteng

You stand on polished platforms in Gabs,
Shaking hands with ghosts of your own making,
Feeding the hungry bellies of Chobe with the heavy aroma of a feast
That never leaves your air-conditioned kitchen.
Your tongue is a river stone, smoothed by easy lies,
Washing the dust from your shoes with the sweat of the forgotten.

You say a lot,
But you say nothing.

You speak of development like a country we can visit,
A map drawn in the ink of disappearing rivers.
But here in Kachikau, the footsteps we take are still barefoot,
Trapped on the same cracked earth our ancestors walked.
You throw words into the air like confetti,
But when they fall on the dry thickets, they are only cold paper,
Littering the soil where our sorghum refuses to grow.
Your speeches are a loud Chobe rain that dries before it hits the ground.

You say a lot,
But you say nothing.

We listen to the grand machinery of your campaigns,
The clanking of your promises, the camera flashes by the riverfront,
But under the watchful eyes of our mothers,
the cupboard remains an empty ribcage.
The clinic down the dusty road still sleeps under a broken roof.
You have a thousand names for our struggle,
A million synonyms for our patience,
But not a single word that can be eaten by a child in the village.

You say a lot,
But you say nothing.

So roll your grand syllables across the podium,
Let your voice echo in the high halls of your triumph.
We will sit here in the quiet of the baobab's shadow,
Counting the bones of your heavy vocabulary,
Waiting for the day your silence finally tells the truth.