The Day Shall Dawn

We present this work in honor of the South African holiday, Heritage Day.

A new man is born,
Full of strength and agility,
To demonstrate conventional wisdom,
In defence of the fatherland,

Through cannons of criticism,
His dragon force and enthusiasm,
Shall perform a daring combat against fascism.

Man shall initiate a campaign,
Against genocidal crimes,
Committed and perpetrated against beloved humanity,
Today housing is another means of exploitation,
And before the spirit of Hitler destroys man,
Wake me up to join you in the march,
To a people’s kingdom.

Man is swallowed by limited pleasures of time,
Man is forsaken like a memory lost,
Say it aloud, justice is absent and democracy is nil,
Say it aloud, to counter the state lie,
Again shout it aloud,
The government is riding fast to a greatest fall,
From one great defeat to another.

Tuberculotive bodies of young and old,
Shall come to pass,
Institutionalised violence is silent in holocaust by design,
However like a surprise the day shall dawn,
And the world shall mourn,
And the burial of fascism,
And a threat to world peace shall be no more,
The doors of hell are golden,
Possessed and displayed by Western powers,
Self-interest is a vehicle to the graveyard,
Hidden worms shall come to exposure,
And collaborators like giant spiders,
Shall belong to the dustbin of history,
All this shall take root before dawn.

Shalom is the language of world peace,
North, East, South and West,
The Inkomati accord is not freedom but a deal,
No state power shall legislate me not to love man,
Do something to facilitate change in Africa,
Do something to fling the doors of Pollsmor and Robben Island prison wide open,
Do something favourable for the exiles to return back home,
Oh! Africa let all this be done before dawn,
Oh! Peace loving South Africans let it be done before dawn.

I will Still Sing

We present this work in honor of the South African holiday, National Women’s Day.

Amelia Blossom Pegram
South African
1955 – 2022

It is my celebration
I will drum my drum
I will sing my song
I will dance my dance
I do not need your anaemic hands
brought together in pale applause
I do not need your
‘You are such musical people’
toothy smile
It is my celebration
You wonder what I have to celebrate
What does the drum tell me
If you must speculate
Watch out
One day as you throw your head back
As you gather your hearty laughter
I will change my dance
I will still sing
The drum will scream
Celebration.

Meet My Father

We present this work in honor of Father’s Day.

Meet my father, who refuses food –
pecks at it like a bird or not at all –
the beard disguising his thin cheeks.
This, for a man whose appetite was legend,
hoovering up the scraps his daughters couldn’t eat.

The dustbin man, we joked.
And here he is, trailing his fork
through food we’ve laboured to make soft,
delicious, sweet. Too salty, or too tough,
it tastes of nothing, makes him choke,
he keeps insisting, stubbornly.
In truth, the logic’s clear. His very life
is bitter and the spice it lacks is hope.
He wants to stop. Why do we keep on
spooning dust and ashes down his throat?

Morning

We present this work in honor of the South African holiday, Human Rights Day.

You are too naked for touching.
If I stroke your brown skin
as you sleep you may break. I irritate
your long dreams. I depress your awakening. I am
no good for you in your alien habitation.

Waiting for you to wake I wait
for a return from a long voyage, not knowing
what scurvy violence you bring back
to embarrass my clean house. Wherever I sow
perfection it grows into weeds. O my beautiful

How time changes the clean seed, how the corruption
of absence on my body, my damp hands. Awake
I am in sleep also, treacherous and lonely.
I don’t know where to go, where to find rest.
Come back.

Burgersfort Landfill

Vultures dwell here
Among the grim faced shack dwellers
With their famished children

When the waste delivery truck arrives
The dark human vultures shove and shuffle
Fighting over dirt
Competing with rats and pigs

No one talks about this grim enterprise
The vultures hope to turn rags to riches
In this, our wasted market economy

When ministers talk of black empowerment
No one mentions this grim enterprise
Which tries in vain to turn rags to riches

But on election day –
The vultures are fed with pap and beef stew
Dressed in a clean T-shirt with the leader’s face

And when darkness falls
The vultures jadedly retire to the dump
A celestial graveyard of hopes – their home

A Red Debates with Christians

Nontsizi Mgqwetho
South African
c. 1880? – c. 1930?

Where are your daughters? What do you say?
They crossed the land in search of marriage,
shamelessly shacked up with live-in lovers,
cavorted in dances with young men in New Clare.

With eyes of porridge their mothers bemoan
their absent children, who left them standing,
advising blank air and pleading in vain
with sons and daughters who’ve all been to school.

Jails crammed to capacity, courts jam-packed
with the learned products of school education;
the judges in charge just hoot in derision
at college certificates brandished by bums.

All our crooks are in school,
all our thieves are in school,
all our witches in school:
by Nontsizi, I swear you should all be expelled!

You wear red blankets in God’s very house,
you’re Christians by day, hyenas by night;
the pastor, the shepherd of God’s own flock,
scurries past you without a nod.

What do we make of this curious conduct?
Which voice do we choose from among this babble?
Pride is one of your Christian companions,
God wears a cloak of crocodile hide.

You Christians are suckers for every fad,
you cast off skin garments and dressed up like whites,
your ears are tinkling for white man’s booze,
but whites won’t touch a drop of yours.

Every Sunday you romp on the veld,
kicking a football, whacking a racquet,
clothing your shame in the name of God:
Satan’s struck dumb in amazement.

You’re bereft of love, bereft of all,
yet you proclaim a God of love:
that faith of yours stands just as tall
as I do down on my knees.

If you ever try to come near us again,
we Reds will roast you like meat.
But I’m not saying the word of God
is entirely barren of truth.

Peace!

Translation by Jeff Opland

Threshold

We present this work in honor of the South African holiday, Heritage Day.

I stepped out of the rain
into an Etruscan tomb.

It was a long walk
and a long way yet,

but the map said
they were here,

the old graves
on some farmer’s land.

Between tilled fields,
a shaded space

and now the rain
in grey-fall from the leaves.

I stopped alone, ducked in,
one small step down,

a coomb of earth and stone.
You stood outside

and waited while
I breathed the history bodily.

Soil, leaf, moist
must, membrane memory

and somewhere here, the bones.
My own limbs aching

from the marching day
and now this dusky interval,

an indentation, swerving
off the rutted track.

You call. I turn, step back,
re-join you to press on

between the leaning trees,
ancient coordinates,

each dip and hollow on the path
still slowly filling up with rain.

Song, Somewhere Near Roma

We present this work in honor of the 15th anniversary of the poet’s death.

John Matshikiza
South African
1954 – 2008

If I could
I’d like to talk about
Riding on your back
Through Sotho-speaking
Mountains in the snow
Lost naked
In an overwhelming sky

We’d talk about
How nice today has been
How still you could learn
Life from me From my tribe
But how can we now
With all this blood?

My Name is February

We present this work in honor of the poet’s 70th birthday.

My name is February.
I was sold
my breasts, private parts and eyes
my brain
are not mine yet
like the São José
I am ruined
often sank by another storm
no Jesus walking on water for me.

My name is February
I am searching for the rod of the steering wheel
Because the family lies at the bottom
The child stitched to a mother’s dress
Mother’s hand locked in father’s fist
How deep down are they lying, on which side?

My name is February
auctioned, sold, the highest bidder
disposed of my real name
paid no compensation
for that, my name, stolen, sunked
underwater it still lies
with the family
wrecks of the São José
ran aground by a wind
furious waves that decided
the future of the loot
smashing the profit against the embankment.

My name is February
the Masbieker on the São José
that’s how I was called
when my mother tongue of here came into being
when tongues started to form a bond
and letters started walking freely
in a desperate attempt at survival and hope
that forces should not strip this identity too
I became the Masbieker, only a name
born under a different sky
and deeply filled with shame.

My name is February
I rearranged this landscape.
my hands wove the patterns of the vineyards
my feet pressed the grapes
and I was paid with the wine.
I carry Alcohol-Foetal Syndrome children on my back.

My name is February.
I still march on the eve of December one,
I walk the cobblestones of this city
when I cry in desperation,
“remember the emancipation of the slaves!”

My name is February.
two hundred years after the São José
I was given the vote,
they said I was free

But do you see how often I am submerged,
weighed down?
I am the sunken, the soiled,
forgotten
and yet memory will not leave me!

My name is February,
stranded at Third beach
but no one comes to look for me,
no one waves from the dunes,
no bridges back to Mozambique.

My name is February.
I will be resurrected,
brought to the surface
unshackled, unchained, unashamed!
My name is February!

The child who was shot dead by soldiers at Nyanga

The child is not dead
The child lifts his fists against his mother
Who shouts Afrika ! shouts the breath
Of freedom and the veld
In the locations of the cordoned heart

The child lifts his fists against his father
in the march of the generations
who shouts Afrika ! shout the breath
of righteousness and blood
in the streets of his embattled pride

The child is not dead
not at Langa nor at Nyanga
not at Orlando nor at Sharpeville
nor at the police station at Philippi
where he lies with a bullet through his brain

The child is the dark shadow of the soldiers
on guard with rifles Saracens and batons
the child is present at all assemblies and law-givings
the child peers through the windows of houses and into the hearts
of mothers
this child who just wanted to play in the sun at Nyanga is everywhere
the child grown to a man treks through all Africa
the child grown into a giant journeys through the whole world

Without a pass

Poets Corner

Celebrating a world of written and spoken verse

South African Poets