Ari Sitas
After a day of stoning and gas
an ancient chore beckons
by the ocean’s lip -
a crowd heaving, heaving, sifting through the sand
for coins
A happy bulldozer resting
after eating up another row of shacks
its jaw nestling by a crab-hole
What a fine evening
What a sea, what pulse
of insects
tiptoeing to the lovelorn strings
of a dune’s cicada;
What a toptiptoe of tiny birds
Hurrying in and out of pollen
before the blooms shut shop
What a sigh from the darkening mangrove
as the crowd picks up the evening song:
“musa ukuthath’ investments ezulweni/
kodwa/
ukutheng’ iLotto ithiketi/
thathani MaChance! uLotto machance!”
I cannot sing
A jagged bamboo knife has scraped my throat
To sing and remind whom, what?
About the stars
or the strings of mango in between my teeth?
About the sneering palm tree?
About the piece of cloth waving in the breeze
on the barb of the casino’s fence?
How the descending sun wrestles with the shadows
of the thousand hills?
How past dreams lurk there?
How no one remembers that they do?
How there is a residue of dream on my frown?
The night’s very restless inyanga is already by the pier,
eyes shut, pacing
and murmuring the 11th commandment of a new faith
The beer-stained guards have exhausted their shift
umpiring since dawn the eternal struggle
between mynahs and crows by the rubbish bins.
The fishermen, past their third bottle of cane
dream of grunters, reek of shad
and complain that no ship was hooked
even though they cast their lines far in the far gardens of foam
And there: the sea’s eylid full of fins
The factory sirens quiet at last
The hooligan moon peers over the Bluff
and the horses of the deep get restless.
In another time this would have been the moment for our story-telling friends
but they are gone
Tonight the ridge and hills will not be on fire
The spring child’s last sigh will not be recorded
The salt march will not pass by
The salt - yes, only the salt endures, the salt.
I tiptoe past the bulldozer
Its eyes are moist
dreaming of its earth-mother
in some abandoned iron-mine.
Featured at The Red Wheelbarrow on 17 November 2022
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