From Malikhanye

By MXOLISI NYEZWA

 

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

you who have cast the first stone
and robbed my blithe existence of its foliage
i walk bearing like death
the heavy punch of your eyes
the eyelashes of your smile.

***

if only i could go just now and not hesitate
i would be near the crystalline beauty of your hair
this afternoon my heart is yearning like an ocean rock
the seed swells its warm raptures like the morning
and the oceans too deep and treacherous to sail.

***

maybe it is not me they are looking for
those who wanted much more than this obedient earth can give
i brought this pain with me when i came to this township
dragging the copper moon
and the extravagant posture of loneliness
on two wings

malikhanye, you were once the slowness of the earth
until the volcano erupted and made all mystic things more natural
the republican faces who couldn’t recognize the texture of your hair
everything was dead until you came and lifted our sun.

 

 

Mxolisi Nyezwa is founder and editor of Kotaz, now in its fourteenth year.

Click here to purchase Issue 04

From Malikhanye

Related Posts

Chinese Palace

Portfolio from China: Poetry Feature I

LI ZHUANG
In your fantasy, the gilded eaves of Tang poked at the sun. / In their shadow, a phoenix rose. / Amid the smoke of burned pepper and orchids, / the emperor’s favorite consort twirled her long sleeves. / Once, in Luo Yang, the moon and the sun shone together.

Xu sits with Grandma He, the last natural heir of Nüshu, and her two friends next to her home in Jiangyong. Still from Xu’s documentary film, “Outside Women’s Café (2023)”. Image courtesy of the artist.

Against This Earth, We Knock

JINJIN XU
The script takes the form of a willow-like text, distinctive from traditional Chinese text in its thin shape and elegance. Whenever Grandma He’s grandmother taught her to write the script, she would cry, as if the physical act of writing the script is an act of confession.

a photo of raindrops on blue window glass

Portfolio from China: Poetry Feature II

YUN QIN WANG 
June rain draws a cross on the glass.  / Alcohol evaporates.  / If I come back to you,  / I can write. My time in China  / is an unending funeral.  / Nobody cried. The notebook is wet.