This way I salute you:
My hand pulses to my back trousers pocket
Or into my inner jacket pocket
For my pass, my life,
Jo'burg City.
My hand like a starved snake rears my pockets
For my thin, ever lean wallet,
While my stomach groans a friendly smile to hunger,
Jo'burg City.
My stomach also devours coppers and papers
Don't you know?
Jo'burg City, I salute you;
When I run out, or roar in a bus to you,
I leave behind me, my love
My comic houses and people, my dongas and my ever whirling dust,
My death,
That's so related to me as a wink to the eye.
Jo'burg City
I travel on your black and white and roboted roads,
Through your thick iron breath that you inhale,
At six in the morning and exhale from five noon.
Jo'burg City
That is the time when I come to you,
When your neon flowers flaunt from your electrical wind,
That is the time when I leave you,
When your neon flowers flaunt their way through the falling darkness
On your cement trees.
And as I go back, to my love,
My dongas, my dust, my people, my death,
Where death lurks in the dark like a blade in the flesh
I can feel your roots, anchoring your might, my feebleness
In my flesh, in my mind, in my blood,
And everything about you says it,
That, that is all you need of me.
Jo'burg City, Johannesburg
Listen when I tell you
There is no fun, nothing, in it,
When you leave the women and men with such frozen expressions,
Expressions that have tears like furrows of soil erosion,
Jo'burg City, you are dry like death,
Jo'burg City, Johannesburg, Jo'burg City
MATSHIDISO: PAST FOOTSTEPS
we do not choose to be born
nor do we choose the way we will die
and when death comes
we know lots about how we lived
so
let it be
since time, by putting us where we are now
has taught us ways of death poses
that violence can wipe sight away
even throttle ears
or surrender our lips to silence
i can say
as we watched your footsteps seize your life out of many kinds of deaths
and you were thrust into a flight dance -
the way our eyes moved
from you
paging through many other faces and eyes
paving, seeking assurance
was the only scream we had come to use
a hope pitched in hopelessness
so—
we saw babies come out of you in rapid succession
as if your womb was a furious machinegun
so they came and we stood and watched
our eyes staring into your face which had become a fathomless space
your face, so deep
so dark
defying dizzy and whispered pleadings
matshidiso, my sister
our silence was a knowing, taught by agony
in our nightmares which we put through nights barked at by dogs
we saw you die in many, so many ways
now that you are dead, now that you are past your footsteps
which gave you your brutal gait
we sit back, we sigh
our memory has been given another violent lesson
yes
while i wait to hear how you died
whether you were sprawled in the dusty streets sipping death
or you lay in bed vomiting your life
what is it that matters
denver, colorado, june 1975 from
no baby must weep:
i have walked these streets
they vanish to nowhere
i have been in and out of these streets and back
to nowhere in these streets
these streets are dirty and dusty and muddy
these streets vanish
they vanish like tears on the cheek of a child crying
for sweets
i will never forget what i cried for
these bloody streets can vanish to hell
i don't care
these streets are dirty
mama
you too know these streets are dusty
you and i have walked them, you holding my hand
now it is my turn
let me hold your hand black mother hold my hand
these streets are dirty, these streets lead to nowhere
they wiped your smile away and left a glimmer in your eyes
these streets are bloody dirty
these streets go nowhere
they've woven the children of this town into their dust
they've whirled to nowhere
these streets are dirty and dusty
they've made the children of this town gasp in their dongas
the children died baked in mud
washed by dirty water
these streets stink like apartheid
these streets are traps
hold my hand my mother
let's look at them
these the squeaking blood-stained hungry-rat battlegrounds
where children pick the idea of making children
here
only whores know how to breathe in the dust
and only the murderers live long
and the cops shoot first and think after
these streets of this town
are dirty
these streets go nowhere
hold my hand my mother hold my hand
i can see the shadow falling and the sky is thick and mute
these streets are under the sky
and the old women die their eyes looking to the mute sky
we've been looking for bread here
we hope to find it
and we've been looking for water here
this thirst begins to burn our throats
and some of the children don't know yet
that these streets lead to nowhere
the children were caught by dark while they did the monkey jive
their grannies looked up
kneeling
sending a cloud of voices hanging in the street
the voices hold a hymn
embrace it in flames leaping to the dark sky
the vast sky
an echo of clapping hands rumbling trying to break
the frozen deafness
only a hymn
made in a red heart
rising
climbing into the thick shadow of the night
seeking
saying the last about the broken heart of man
seeking
and the sound of the drum lies bubbling on the thick
blanket of the night
breaking silence to pieces
and the grannies come back
their old gaits dragging their shadows
maybe their red hearts have hope
the last secret of the wretched
