A Dream Deferred
In the restless belly of the city,
Where dreams are sold by the hour and lost by dawn,
He walks — nameless, speechless —
A young man stitched together by hope and hunger.
His shoes, thin as his patience,
Know the weight of every mile between
One rejection and the next.
His diploma, once bright as sunrise,
Now creased and weary like his palms —
A paper promise that promised nothing.
He studied language, the soul of words,
Learned to breathe life into dead verses,
To find light in the silence of letters.
But now he speaks to walls that never answer,
To employers who smile with pity,
To systems built to break the tender-hearted.
They say, “We need experience.”
He laughs — quietly, bitterly —
For how does a doorless room
Expect you to enter?
How do you plant seeds
In the soil of rejection?
He dreams of microphones and newsrooms,
Of stories told beneath hot lights,
Of truth cutting through the fog like dawn.
But the newsroom is a mirage —
He watches it from afar,
As others — richer, safer, louder —
Walk in without knocking.
His hunger becomes his teacher.
It whispers lessons the classroom never taught:
How to stretch a day with no meal,
How to smile when your stomach growls,
How to dream quietly so no one laughs.
He lodges where the rent is silence.
He eats time, drinks faith, sleeps on tomorrows.
He hides from shame the way
The moon hides from daylight —
Not because it is weak,
But because the world never learned to see soft light.
He once believed education was a bridge.
Now he stands in its middle,
And both ends have disappeared.
University — a name he murmurs like prayer.
But prayers, too, demand offerings.
And he has none.
No hand to lift him,
No pocket to borrow from,
No kin to call,
Only the echo of his own endurance.
Still, he does not curse the world.
He watches others rise,
Whispers “well done,”
Then returns to his silence —
The silence of the unfinished,
The silence of the almost.
Yet beneath the ashes of his days,
A stubborn ember glows.
He writes on scraps,
On the back of failed applications,
On the walls of his heart.
Stories of people who fall
And still look up.
Stories of hope,
That refuse to die even when ignored.
He has become a mirror
For a generation unseen —
Young, bright, and broke.
Their dreams deferred,
Their names unspoken,
Their brilliance buried under bureaucracy.
And when the night grows too long,
He steps outside and looks to the east,
Waiting for a dawn he may not live to see —
But still believes in.
For faith, like breath,
Refuses to die quietly.
And though the world may forget his name,
He carries within him something sacred —
The courage to keep waiting,
To keep writing,
To keep walking
When every road has already said no.
For some dreams do not vanish —
They wander.
They wait for a season
When the world will finally listen.
And when that dawn arrives,
The poor man’s silence
Will become thunder.
And his deferred dream —
Long hidden beneath hunger and dust —
Will rise,
Will shine,
Will speak for all
Who dared to hope in the dark.
Coda: The Call of a Generation
You — the sons of silence,
Holding diplomas like wings that never flew,
Do not let the world sweep you aside like dust.
You — the writers unwritten,
The journalists unheard,
The singers silenced before their songs —
Know this:
Dreams are not given,
They are fought for.
Do not hide your hunger;
It is proof you are alive.
Do not bury your failures;
They are seeds waiting for rain.
Raise your voice —
Even if it cracks.
Walk — even if your road is mud.
Write — even if no one reads.
Because tomorrow’s dawn
Belongs to those who endured the night.
Do not fear to start small —
Roots begin in the dark.
Do not envy those who were carried —
Their wings were borrowed.
Yours must grow from pain.
Rise, all of you scattered by poverty and chance,
Rise from the dust of forgotten classrooms,
From the silence of unpaid dreams.
Rise —
For even deferred dreams do not die;
They only sleep,
Waiting for a braver morning.
Poet: Corneille Ntaco