We line up at the dawn to buy our bread,
Two working hands beneath the selfsame sky,
We speak a dialect the soil has read
Long before borders taught us how to lie.

You bring your sweet bananas from the hill,
I bring my cabbages, bruised by the frost;
We trade our small change in the morning chill,
Counting the coins to see what living cost.

Then men in suits arrive in polished vans,
With loudspeakers that crack the quiet air,
They do not look into our calloused hands,
They only see a voting paper there.

They point at you and say, “He took your place,”
They point at me and say, “Protect your town.”

And just like that, they give our pain a face,
So we won’t see the ones who held us down.
They tell us you’re the reason youth are poor,
The reason that the clinic has no bed,
While they lock gold behind a heavy door
And leave us fighting over scraps of bread.

And so we turn, with heavy, bitter eyes,
Forget the times you held my market stall,
We drink the poison dressed in grand disguises,
And build a fortress where there was no wall.

My brother, when they clear your wooden stand,
And you pack up your life into a sack,
The politician gains another hand,
But tell me—what do we ever get back?

The elections end, the ink dries on the thumb,
The sirens fade, the speeches go away.
The hunger stays. The silence grows so numb.
And we are left with nothing more to say.