South African Poetry

Jo'burg 1998
ARJA SALAFRANCA

A young boy,
a first-year university student,
takes the bus home
through a scuzzy part of town.
He looks out the windows.
Slumped against the doorway
a man bleeds into his own blood,
he's just been shot dead
for no reason, really,
except that a gang, having robbed a shop
still had a bullet left in a gun.
The dead man bleeds,
in his hand
blue cigarette smoke still curls from a lit cigarette.

Paying an account in a smart department store,
I stand behind a couple.
She: short, fattish, plain, young;
he: taller, fatter, plain, young.
For a long long time he caresses the
hard cartilage of her ear,
round and round the seashell shape,
talking, loving,
she looks demure,
he is so tender.
I look away,
the line shuffles forward.

Imabalane song
IKE MBONENI MUILA

piki piki mabalane
sala sala gentleman
nda wana vhana
vha tshi khou tamba
vha
tshi
imbelela
tshinoni
vha tshiri thungununu
nemulambo
nemulambo kumedza . . ,
piki piki mabalane
sala sala gentleman
over billy bok
akaka billy bok
inch inch inch
as one as two
aga jeremia sies-tog
puma wena sala wena
piki piki mabalane
sala sala gentleman
hoor net dae blend
two skyf saggies
madakeni
stick in the mud
bova cathawane
sixteen . . ,

(A translation from Venda:

i found children playing
singing for the bird
singing river bird
singing river bird
river bird catch a nap...,)

This Joy of Landscape
MICHAEL KANTEY

This joy of landscape -
the gilt-edged grasses
on the early morning common -
is quick to pass
but lingers on like a well-hung canvas

One collects such images
and stores them lovingly
in a profuse architecture of chambers
tier upon tier
until one day you simply lock the door
and walk away
leaving perhaps a little catalogue
of bland entries
for those that stay next door

This is mine
That is yours
together we sing a grand oratorio
a muted requiem

Dance together to the same music
and our finger tips will not match precisely.
To the casual observer, however,
we remain one.

So our apparent little solitudes -
such painfully lonely lives -
melt away while walking
into the mystery seas

of early morning grass

Eurydice's Story
WENDY WOODWARD

Now I live in the darkness
I see it was his story not mine.

All that fanfare about the lyre
charming the gloomy king:
the songs of the stricken young husband
with the newly-wraithed wife
whom he wished to return to the light.

Even the Furies were seduced,
believing he was playing for me
to come up, up the white, marbled path
to the shining cumulus,
and the mare's tails swishing across the blue.

Instead, he was measuring the notes,
calculating each syncopation
to turn Cerebrus lapdog,
to charm Charon into a return journey,
to seduce all the denizens of the deathly labyrinth--
Tantalus ceased his grasping
Sisyphus turned from his wounds

That achieved, he had no more need
to keep honour with the gods or me.
His gaze pierced our love's luminescence,
Looking back, he returned me to the dark
to dice with pomegranate seeds forever

His yearning arms fooled them---not me;
I knew there were many Echoes
slipping behind lichened rocks
in the yellowwoods above,
many nymphs in the streams
who would sing to the lyre
he had seemed to play for me

bank city
JASON ARMSTRONG

bank city: enclave of fear;
the dogs brood over the streets in packs.
overalls, gas mask, condom -
blood is the moment and the earth is on fire.

delirious with death and ecstasy;
no-one sleeps: fuck wildly with fear.
hot blood shaking like an earthquake
the scythe is loose upon the fields of bones.

to sleep and to remember;
to choose or list: to happen.
steaming with revenge and madness,
the hand descends to count you out -

scorched earth policy of the gods.