A dominion of love on the banks of a meandering river <br />Where waste collapses down from the sewer <br />A place where love lives on amidst the polluted land <br />A miracle of life, of where blood and toil stand <br /> <br />The slums, makeshift habitats of the human kind <br />Tapestry of slum dog dreams and of the unprecedented find <br />Where dreams rise from the miasma and the stench <br />As lovers gather on the banks holding hands on a bench <br /> <br />The human kind, stung my mosquitoes as night falls <br />Innocence in ragged khaki shorts and in polyester shawls <br />Of the wide eyed boys and the pig-tailed girls <br />Hovering in the wind, in broken strands and sweeping curls <br /> <br />Where politicians prosper even in the lassitude of promises <br />As social workers run amok like ants around the premises <br />Drug lords creep through doorways to entice juvenile hope <br />As the human spirit searches for a getaway for an unheralded elope <br /> <br />In these barren lands, on the veranda of makeshift homes <br />With TVs on wooden boxes and a fragile antenna on domes <br />As temptation lingers from the booby traps of modernity <br />To find the soul in a marginal land, to evict in prosperity <br /> <br />Hope lives in rainwater basins and in mud puddles of the monsoon <br />Of innocence staring at the heavens for a glimpse of the moon <br />Where hope hangs by a thread yet an enclave of human spirit <br />As slum dogs out-muscle destiny, with dreams that was once lit<br /><br />Dilantha Gunawardana<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-slums-2/
