New Criticals

Ιn Memory of Hector Pieterson (1964 born - murdered 16/06/1976)

I. Falling in Johannesburg

I am
Seetebogiso [1]
singing wooden notes
these days with unknown faces
A bird on Magic Guarri [2]
the pre-world
A sheet of gold on Towerghwarrie
for all possibilities

A Motlhakola in the inner eye
striking the naked horizon

We are
musiciennes du silence
waving l' éternel azur
the nameless beauties of truth
a danced circle around the dying eland of history

Oh! Heal
my past
is yours

We are
spellings of the unsayable
breathing in a waterhole

Oh! Heal
my past
is yours

these children with unknown faces
these days of June are wounded
blood and milk

Oh! Lure
the ferocious animal out
to the real world

The sense of sight and of touch
weathered images are falling
in Johannesburg

II. The Bakubung Gate Love song

Under the volcanic tuff

Goeiedag dames en here
Hoe gaan dit met u? [3]

Look
the toxic passage of hyena
white
and
black
into wool grass of winter

Ladies and Gens
Touch
Smell
Read these messages

Here
I exist
There
I am starving

Look at me
as inside your stare echoes the roaring lion
on the plateau
of Pilanesberg

Ladies and Gens
Any question?

Follow me
in the saving smell of the eland
forward this shade
together
with the fear of life
Ndza ku rhandza [4]

Yebo, sawubona [5]

I can hear
your lips -
the unsayable tongue
swayed her hips -
whips of the fire
on a blue-veined stone

Un corps a été mis au monde et maintenu

We can see and hear
the sun shining freedom beyond meaning
that rhythm of your eyes
in Mogwase

III. The Flying Archives

Sometimes
I think
The world
Creating dreams

Ka – an washed her clothes at Piet van Wyk’s [6]

Sometimes
I create
The dreams
Thinking of you
And you
Ka – an died of an unknown cause

I switch on the light
Among the humidity
In the empty corners of the house
Where
The ordinary privacy
Reshapes history

The widow of Toyowo
Killed by a lion when searching for her children
Toyowo died of starvation

There are some slips
In Athens
Melting tea with capsicum - peper
Immigrant slips

There are some slips
In South Western Townships
Melting kirving balls with spelter - zinc
Ageless slips

Eumorfia the grandmother of Vangelis

Tilled the earth

There are tourists
In these slips
The in and out groups

I remember
There was one day that I had to leave school
After one of the teachers told me
That the police came looking for me. [7]

Stories about hypnotic poisons
When a distant rain comes to us

Eumorphia saw her son
killed in the civil war of the
unknown hands
I switch on the light
Among the humidity
In the empty corners of the house
Where the memories are whispering
the frozen silence
And the poems walk
among nails and flowers
on every hill
of every hope
We know
How to punish
And how to revenge
We learned so much about death!

Ka – an washed her clothes
in earth of Eumorphia
where Toyowo gouges fruits and suns
in the olive tree
thinking of me
and you

IV. The Returning Poem

The rain bewitched!

Taken
by shades of breaths and whispers and winds

Mayibuye [8]

Sepedi
Sesotho
Setswana
siSwati
Tshivenda
Xitsonga
Afrikaans
English
isiNdebele
isiXhosa
isiZulu [9]

as I am
IIKabbo [10]
asleep into the dreams of a child

as I see
le hlabile letšatši ka June 16 [11]
as I hear
the heaven’s thing
walks
on the tabla

a song sung by Moon
a song that was once a childish shoe

Le hlabile letšatši ka June 16
I do not cry with tears
I cry with sounds
Sepedi
Sesotho
Setswana
siSwati
Tshivenda
Xitsonga
Afrikaans
English
isiNdebele
isiXhosa
isiZulu

turn back for me
stones of prey
are dying as a metaphor

landscapes of holes
healings of herbs
the dawned days

Mayibuye

Africa

And the taken poem

is returning

a vessel into wrinkles

of our hands

Notes

[1] June

[2] Magic Guarri (English) Towerghwarrie (Afrikaans) Motlhakola (Setswana)

[3] Good day ladies and gentlemen, How are you?

[4] I love you

[5] Yes, I see you
[6] The Archive of Wilhelm Bleek and Lucy LLoyd
[7] Truth and Reconcilitation Commision, Youth Hearing Submissions, Questions and Answers, Date: 22 May, 1997, Name: Sandra Adonis, Case: CT/01110, Athlone, Day Three.
[8] Come back

[9] Eleven official languages in South Africa

[10] Genealogies

[11] 16th of June, The Day of Resistance in SoWeTo [Southern West Townships]