Soweto

Out of this roar of innumerable demons

hot cinema tarzan sweat

rolling moth ball eyes yellow teeth   

cries of claws slashes clanks

a faint high pallor

dust

oceans rolling over the dry sand of the savanna

your houses homes warm still with the buffalo milk   

bladder of elephant . tusk of his stripped tree   

sing soft clinks

but the barracks

the dark dark barks of the shark   

boys

the cool juice of soweto . . .

out of this dust they are coming

our eyes listen out of rhinoceros thunder   

darkness of lion

the whale roar stomping in heaven

that black bellied night of hell and helleluia

when all the lights of anger flicker flicker flicker flicker

and we know somewhere there there is real fire

basuto mokhethi namibia azania shaka the zulu kenyatta the shatt   

erer the maasai wandering into the everlasting shadow of jah

daughters lost daughters

bellowing against bullhorn and kleghorn

bellowing against bargwart and the searchlights of dogs   

bellowing against crick and the kick in the stomach

the acrid wretch against the teeth

bellowing against malan malan malam malan

and boer and boerwreck and boertrek and truckloads of metal

helmet and fusil and the hand grenade

and acid rhodes and the diamonds of oppenheimer   

the opulence of voortresshers the grass streiders . . .

suddenly like that fire the crows in johannesburg   

you were there

torn. in tears. tatters

but the eyes glittered and the fist

clenching around that scream of your mother bled   

into a black head of hammers

and the night fell howl   

on soweto

the night fell howl   

on soweto

and we who had failed to listen all. those. foot. steps   

who had given you up like a torn paper package

your heroes       burning in your houses   

                        rising from your dust bowls   

                        flaring from the sky

                        listen now as the news items lengthen   

                        gathering like hawks looking upward like the   

                        leopard plunging into the turmoil like the

                        constrictor

and that crouch/shot

shout out against that beast and pistol

the police who shot patrice who castrated kimathi

                        and clattering clattering clattering clattering   

                        the veldts gun metals wings

                        rise from their last supper their hunger of bones

                        bomba

and the daniels sing

                        ukufa akuqheleki kodwa ke   

                        and we are rowing out to sea where the woman   

                        lived with her pipe and her smoke   

                        shack

                        and her tea in the tea   

                        pot

                        tankard of hopes

                        herbs

                        lamagora afele   

                        and we are rowing out to sea   

                        where there are farms

                        and our farmers laid waste the land

                        to make honey. we are the bells of the land . . .

 

                                             

and that hill now under the ocean

and the pages splashed with his blood   

and that bullet a hero a hero herero . . .

once the germans destroyed every sperm   

in your village every man who could walk

every nim growing into the noom and nam of yr man/hood

they stripped skin and made catapults skulls were their pelmets   

upon the wall

and the torn feet cracked and stacked and streggaed

rubbish heap . dog howl . cenotaph

and for days there was stench over the grasslands   

and for months there was silence upon the trees   

cow . goat . udder . manyatta

bantustan upon the land . . .

and then it was gone like all hero hero herero   

like your canoe upon the land . . .

walking back down now from the shores of kikuyu water   

washing back down now from Swahili laughter

zimbabwe kinshasa limpopo

always limpopo the limper the healer

it comes down from the ruins of the north   

from the lakes of the luo

from the sunlights and sunrise of the east

as antient as sheba as wise as the pharaohs   

as holy as the early morning mists of ityopia