What makes a solitary cactus bloom
In a desert of despair?
What does it know that I don’t know
Of hope when none is near?
How cussed his assertion is
When all is wilderness.
Is it a mantra the cactus sings
To a world in keen distress?
That we must roll the boulder back
Each time it rolls down our hill?
That no gods but only human wit
Must keep him from his kill?
That no smiles have worth that do not
From the womb of pain emerge?
That no songs of cheer have any mirth
Without knowledge of the dirge?
When the cactus bloom withers away,
The cactus does not die;
Its pricklies pack defiant life
To return when the sands are high.
The cactus says “I sing myself
In the teeth of oppression.
Come join me in a cunning peek-a-boo
To the oppressor’s frustration.”
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