The Poet Laureate of Lesotho: a dream of mine that Rose clearly knows about. I’m a chapter in her book. Thanks, Rose.

RICHARD OF YORK GAVE BATTLE IN VAIN
for Barack Obama

The world has been cut
into pieces with the knife
of greed: this new one
lives in all worlds with
his skin, and has been sent
to turn us into
one separate thing,
fit the colours into
the prism once again,
so that there’s light;
this new one knows
folks in a mansion,
knows others in prison,
oboe or shimmering blade
in their colourless hand.
He has seen places where
for many desert days men
lived under other men,
has heard their message
and seen their faces, painted
in the book of love. Men
lamenting themselves and
wanting life, the cry of
a baby that’s being born.
This one has fallen
like a meteor amongst us.
The slavery gong has sounded,
calling off the master and
his dogs, getting the world
going again; on this black hole,
light that was held back
has now been set free again.
© Rethabile Masilo

NB: Get a load of this, this and this, too.

After she swallowed me, my mother,
swollen with me, looked for the proper place
to empty me, the pain of carrying me
harsh on her body, a weight in a child’s hand.
So she had me among wild poppies at the foot of her
bed, flowers with faces opening, and cactuses
arranged in a range of well-wishing brightness
smiling to welcome me. With a naked cry I arrived
and scribbled my name on the firmament.
When I was older, I met a woman who, like my mother,
couldn’t stomach lumps, and each time
we would lie there, sleeping or making love,
clinging like spoons, medicinal and clanking
like African shells, three spoons if you counted
the child, whose life was about to enter itself.
Our spines curved around its centre
as we lay together. Then one bright day,
near the 6th or 7th month, the elders
summoned us; we trekked to the village,
and the elders announced to us, to her, in
hushed but serious tones, that in her basin
was contained the life, the everlasting.
© Rethabile Masilo

Unable to move, she watch them drag him
from the house into a donga
and beat him, one goon opening his body
to pour blood unto the off-colour ditch,
like wine seeking the whiteness of cloth
that cover the brains of boys
and redden their eyes.
Everyone try not to look
but go their way into the dim June dusk
to their families.
Even God don’t interfere
when they beat people like this
with sjambok and machete.
They killed him, killed him as I watched, she say,
speaking to no one in particular.
He wailed, but they kept on beating him quietly.
The women shake their heads and speak
in subdued dialect
of herd boy who find a half-clothed body,
half-eaten by hyenas. She wail some more,
as harpooned whale do.
Her hands hold her head
like she want to unscrew it
and give it back to God.
The women tut-tut and shake their heads
to see her wail like that.
Night come, and soon it is
the lighting of lamps, and everyone shout
to call daughter or son to table
for a bit of pap and soup, after
the ritual of water and soap.
© Rethabile Masilo

NOTE: This poem was “inspired” by the story of the Matyaka family. Today, Friday 27 June 2008, Robert Mugabe is staging a sham election in Zimbabwe. I decided to post “For Matyaka” today, even if I feel I have not yet made it the best I can make it . I will continue to work on it online. If you need more information about the tragedy in Zimbabwe, here’s a link. Have a good weekend.

——————–

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So many years, so much faith, Hu,
such bounty in mankind,
the sun shining through its lens
to etch truth into books.

I hold a mirror to my face, looking at
my life from the world’s arched back.

Steel rods fill the mandala of my dreams,
bars that won’t let me leave like I should,
to leap over the Great Wall to the place of gods
on Mount Gephel, where monks

fire the streets of the town where I was born
as I, Jamyang, wait for somebody
to bring blankets for this floor, some
writing pads, a pencil, so that I may

take these poems home with me
when one day I manage to set foot again
on a Lhasa-bound train.

So many years, Hu, so much faith
where monks fire the streets of the town
and etch truth into books.
© Rethabile Masilo

Jamyang Kyi is a Tibetan singer, song-writer, journalist, who on the 1st of April was jailed by Chinese authorities. Protest poems is asking poets to write something against the action taken by China’s leaders, something for the release of Jamyang. Please visit protestpoems.org for more information. And if you haven’t already done so, bookmark them and visit regularly to see what unfairly treated journalist or artist the community is supporting.

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