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by Staff Writer
Consider this pinpoint of entry at Beitbridge
And loose control to the neurosis of this border
To paper passports, rubber stamps and ink
That simply professes where one belongs
Consider also the money-mongering border-man
Maybe he is trying to uphold the order of things
Maybe he is trying to survive through this order of things.
The order of things is now more stunning
That when they were running out of their country
Nobody showed anyone passports, rubber stamps and ink
Entries and exits were at every point
Without this stunning awareness of this border
So time, like water, flows away and is soon forgotten
And the raven shivers into the wind at this point of entry.
From a breathe of a connection
From the brutality of denying this connection
From borders become electric walls
From bonds broken by borders
From standing all day long at border post counters
From standing all day long at home affairs offices
From laws made to make us feel illegal
From eyes which tell which land belongs to which people
From sleeping all night long in tall birch trees
From a pack of hungry lions
From a pack of border-gangsters, hyenas and wild dogs.
The voices are still coming up from the river
The river roars into our ears one song
Of the history of a people who have lost their way
Over and over again.
It is a hammer’s job that trampled the place we were born
Our country is now a bleeding wound that cannot contain us
But in the looking we discover the absence of blood
Whilst we stumble along this mad road
Of becoming citizens in another country
And being fully human some day.
So we live in a remembered sorrow
The lost ones are like this-an unborn soul
The ones left alone, humankind’s bastard daughter
Just a colourless corpse!
It is an African phenomenon, I tell you
It is the thing that has come out of all of Africa
Like an imitation of an imitation
But always pretending to ourselves
What selves, I ask you
Broken men, broken women, broken children
Broken, broken, broken, broken, broken. |
