Poem on leaving SA

- ‘it wasn’t roaring, it was weeping’ (Bright Blue)

Country of contradictions
One that sheltered
the unknown foreigner -
then saw him
blaze his way into oblivion
Set aflame
By a lack
That aches into the bones of the angry

Irresolute -
I leave you –
Country that survived apartheid,
Country with the second highest murder rate in the world
knowing I must come back to you soon enough, and
somehow make a rough peace
with the constant fear you instil in me.

Yesterday,
I stood in the Post Office,
One of three whites
In a queue of black people
A red-eyed Zulu man was talking to his mate,
then he broke into song,
But half-heartedly –
His tone matched the face
Of the weary woman behind him,
Who wore a Mr Price denim skirt trailing raggedly onto
Her scuffed fake-leather slip-ons.

The poster behind the spruce Indian man who took my slip,
Spelled in loud red capitals,
MEN – UNITE AGAINST HIV,
The tattered edges curling inwards,

Later a headline catches my eye
‘6-year old Sheldean kicked her attacker between the legs/
Before he indecently assaulted her.”
I read he wept when he showed law officers
The field where he killed her,
The dry yellow Highveld grass
As coarse as his stubble on her face
As she lay there, futilely fighting back -
The cold earth her only witness.

Here,
In this country,
My son’s father
Put my hand
On the head of our baby
As he passed through my darkness
Into the world of light.
To take his first breath of Durban air.

Slippery, strange,
- The most delicate anchoring.

A winter sky burned bright blue
behind the hospital’s darkened windows.

Although
I feel alien
Here,
A rose-bush
In a grove of cycads.

Sometimes,
I think,
I want
My ashes
Scattered across the Chibini Valley
Where I have meditated so often
At the Buddhist Retreat Centre

and a Wild Plum tree planted
to remember me
in the forest that grows along its edge.

3.6