By FIONA ZERBST
—for Vann Nath
I.
This was a school
before it was wire and silence.
Oleander
scented the sunlit courtyard.
Glass door in a glass wall,
screen of reflections, rain-
streaks, fingerprints, slips
the catch of the lock, swings
On the anniversary of 20 March 2003
I sense you close, a part of you,
your stiff shirt, your hand,
never the whole.
for my son malikhanye liyema nyezwa
who died on 2 august 2007 aged 3 months
how do i say this, that once your eyes were like topaz
and your heart clean as jasmine
in the dense forests i follow the black traces of your lashes
in the empty memory of lost time
my feet tumble against cold hope
i’m linking things i’m beginning to see
the length of this organ, my dying land
all the mistakes my god has learned
i have lived to discover a city, an open road,
a bucket of milk, and two gentle doves.
i have discovered in myself
two frightened birds with miles of dirt road to fly.
in the forest hills spiders and black dogs clamoured.
in the corpses of yellow flowers
a rainbow spun across a darkened sky.
i lived in a street where girls with dark eyes sang,
birds with their wings welcomed a harsh rain.
Mxolisi Nyezwa is founder and editor of Kotaz, now in its fourteenth year.
4 a.m. Streets under fog. Streetlights gone.
Except a few down the road
and the moon’s halo
easily obscured by a plume of breath
(After a photograph by Victor Dlamini)
There is that sea, deep sometimes
as the heart at dusk,
the shine on its face soon to fade.
There is that caravel drifting in
and all it brings: a load of good
and the bad unreckoned by the quartermaster.
from Longo Dongoa & the Pocket Crucified
We asked for social overhaul
Got a power-hall roll-CALL
& the world coming down to play ball
On the site of our umbilical burial
tick it off the life-wreck list
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