Durban, South Africa—Some Notations of Value

Metal giraffes march up the bluff

toward the lighthouse. In the moonlight,

whales, or their ghosts, litter the sand.

There is a museum by the park that houses

apartheid; contained in stiff wax dummies.

The tour bus stops on the road’s edge.

On the right a black town, the left Indian.

Pointing he says: This is the racial divide.

Stopping at the bar, the drink menu offers—

Red’s Divas only five rand each.

Each night the pounding sea reminds me

that, here, women are older than God.

These people carry their dead with them,

plastering them onto every met face.

Yet love hums like tuning forks

and the fading spreading sound

is the growth of something more.

Their absence is loud and I long

for the confetti flutter of butterflies.

Abattoirs litter the landscape with the sinister

air of murder, signs proclaiming: Zumba Butchery,

as though this is where the Zumba’s blood-

lust got the better of them.

The air conditioner in my room hums

a dirge to a sea too busy spreading rumors.

Death skips between street children

playing hopscotch in the traffic.

The woman singing in Zulu, in a Jamaican bar,

is calling down fire, calling down fire.

There is no contradiction.

Source: Hands Washing Water (Copper Canyon Press, 2006)