Date: Friday, 28 July 2017
Dear friends,
When I was teaching at Georgia School for the Deaf, the oldest deaf
school in the South, my students were restless and irritable as the Friday
approached. For they used to spend the
weekend with their family circle who did not know how to sign. The so called
"Good Friday and Black Monday" is contrary to them in their exclusive social
world. I hope this poem to instill awareness on our part; for deafness by its
very nature is an invisible handicap. However, this time, such isolation is
highly facilitated by the introduction of VP (Video Phone), and text messages.
Even so, nothing can substitute the realistic human contact or face-to-face
approach; for in Darwinian expressionism homo sapiens by his or her very nature
is a social animal or in Hebraic epigram the best books are people... ad
infinitum.
* I composed this poems in telegraphic script (short sentences) for the benefit of the deaf who can easily sign them as they read with relative ease.
It is
black Friday
How come
How fast
Bright days
Dark nights
So
passed
At the speed
Of light.
Now to the
dorm
To pack up
My dirty clothes
And socks
Along with
My book bag
Before cold
hug
Of bye and bye
What a sad!
What a sigh!
So
soon...
Pretty soon..
At noon
The yellow school bus
Will come to
pick me up
To my dim house
Where I feel lonely
Day and night
Among my
parents
Brothers and sisters
Who don't know
How to sign.
So as I
watch TV
All day...
Or sleep all night
I dream and dream
For WHITE MONDAY
Not
really
For BLACK MONDAY
My favorite school day.
-Haile Bokure