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Writer's pictureThe Red Wheelbarrow Poetry

Portrait of a Bougainvillea

After Desmond Tutu

Phillippa Yaa de Villiers


You arrived in a small black bag, a majestic magenta

plant with roots grasping the dark soil like fingers

firm, your faith always rising to tryst with the sky,

your kiss appetite only for giving. With hungry devotion

you roared a chorus of blossoms hallelujah

we were always meant to be beautiful

and the imperfect world pricked by your secret thorns

bled injustice red bitterness, extraordinary your proud

purple wept into our hearts, laughed up a cerise temple

staining the glass rose, colour spectacle and we followed

the vision for peace from kagiso to bishopscourt

the long legs of your glamour in every garden glorious

thandabantu and now I know what’s right with the world

and what’s wrong, fierce like any animal defending its young

you shriek, dive-bomb like a kiewiet, cry havoc

as parliament catches fire and the land aches

towards sunset, the gold and orange light catching a city

of purple climbers. Tutu’s children of conscience

responding to the season’s urge for change.


Featured at The Red Wheelbarrow on 3 March 2022


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