I want to be the child in these poems
I want to sit with a straw hat and a basket
But my maps are drawn with too many lines
hearts lost in tossed water
knocking are the people
a small boy beaten, playing in the wind
an older boy, coughing
needing to get a school registration
my own children needing
Clinging, unlike the farm dust
too stubborn to scrub away in a rusted bath after sunset
too stubborn to scrub away in a rusted bath after sunset
Finding myself lost
I see the pictures on the old walls
the middle earth, peacefully hanging alone
the gemsbok safe in the wind
But the path I walk
is too full of this trail of followers
Perhaps, the find a cleared vision
Perhaps, the find a cleared vision
is to see them all
most likely unchanged,
waking, walking
after a brief hand held out.
So many years after Ingrid Jonker's poem of the children of Langa and Nyanga, still the children are beaten and unregistered and unplaced. Whatever happened to the promised freedom. The all to brief hand held out?
ReplyDeleteThank you for this one Heidi.