MONGANGE WALLY SEROTE
it is a
dry white season
dark
leaves don’t last, their brief lives dry out
and with
a broken heart they dive down gently headed for the earth,
not even
bleeding.
it is a
dry white season brother,
only the trees
know the pain as they still stand erect
dry like
steel, their branches dry like wire
indeed it
is a dry white season
but
seasons come to pass.
But we have
only one mother, none can replace,
Just as we have no choice to be born,
We can't choose mothers;
We fallout of
them like we fallout of life to death.
And Alexandra,
My beginning was
knotted to you,
Just like you knot my destiny.
You throb in my
inside silences
You are silent
in my heart-beat that's loud to me.
Alexandra often I've cried.
When I was
thirsty my tongue tasted dust,
Dust burdening your nipples.
I cry Alexandra
when I am thirsty.
Your breasts
ooze the dirty waters of your dongas,
Waters diluted
with the blood of my brothers, your children,
Who once chose dongas for death-beds.
Do you love me
Alexandra, or what are you doing to me?
You frighten me, Mama,
You wear
expressions like you would be nasty to me,
You frighten me, Mama,
When I lie on
your breast to rest, something tells me,
You are bloody cruel.
Alexandra, hell
What have you
done to me?
I have seen
people but I feel like I'm not one,
Alexandra what are you doing to me?
I
feel have sunk to such meekness!
I lie flat while others walk on me to far places.
I have gone from you, many times,
I come back.
Alexandra, I love you;
I know
When all these worlds became funny to me,
I silently waded back to you
And amid the rubble I lay,
Simple and black.
This way I salute you:
My hand pulses
to my back trousers pocket
Or into my inner jacket pocket
For my pass, my
life,
Jo'burg City.
My hand like a starved
snake rears my pockets
For my thin, ever lean wallet,
While my stomach
groans a friendly smile to hunger,
Jo'burg City.
My stomach also
devours coppers and papers
Don't you know?
Jo'burg City, I
salute you;
When I run out,
or roar in a bus to you,
I leave behind me, my love,
My comic houses
and people, my dongas and my ever whirling dust,
My death
That's so
related to me as a wink to the eye.
Jo'burg City
I travel on your
black and white and roboted roads
Through your thick iron breath that you inhale
At six in the morning and exhale from five noon.
Jo'burg City
That is the time
when I come to you,
When your neon
flowers flaunt from your electrical wind,
That is the time when I leave you,
When your neon
flowers flaunt their way through the falling darkness
On your cement
trees.
And as I go
back, to my love,
My dongas, my
dust, my people, my death,
Where death
lurks in the dark like a blade in the flesh,
I can feel your
roots, anchoring your might, my feebleness
In my flesh, in my mind, in my blood,
And everything about you says it, That, that is all you need of me.
Jo'burg City, Johannesburg,
Listen when I tell you,
There is no fun,
nothing, in it,
When you leave
the women and men with such frozen expressions,
Expressions that
have tears like furrows of soil erosion,
Jo'burg City, you are dry like death,
Jo'burg City,
Johannesburg, Jo'burg City.