How the poor souls cry in the cold an the rain, I have blocked my ears, the shall call in in vain

The Serf – Roy Campbell

The Serf – Roy Campbell

His naked skin clothed in the torrid mist

That puffs in smoke around the patient hooves,       

The ploughman drives, a slow somnambulist,

And through the green his crimson furrow grooves

His heart, more deeply than he wounds the plain,               

Long by the rasping share of insult torn,

Red clod, to which the war-cry once was rain

And tribal spears the fatal sheaves of corn,

Lies fallow now. But as the turf divides

I see in the slow progress of his strides                                  

Over the toppled clods and falling flowers,

The timeless, surly patience of the serf

That moves the nearest to the naked earth

And ploughs down palaces, and thrones and towers.

dear God, ordain such deed be done, such words be said, that men will praise Your image yet when all these terrors and hates are dead:

A prayer for all my countrymen – Guy Butler

Though now few eyes

can see beyond

this tragic time's

complexities,

dear God, ordain

such deed be done,

such words be said,

that men will praise

Your image yet

when all these terrors

and hates are dead:

Through rotting days,

beaten, broken,

some stayed pure;

others learnt how

to grin and endure;

and here and there

a heart stayed warm,

a head grew clear.

I have seen people but I feel like I'm not one

Alexandra

  Wally Mongane Serote

Were it possible to say, 


Mother, I have seen more beautiful mothers, 


A most loving mother,


And tell her there I will go,


Alexandra, I would have long gone from you.

But we have only one mother, none can replace, 


Just as we have no choice to be born, 


We can't choose mothers; 


We fallout of them like we fallout of life to death.

And Alexandra, 


My beginning was knotted to you, 


Just like you knot my destiny. 


You throb in my inside silences 


You are silent in my heart-beat that's loud to me. 


Alexandra often I've cried. 


When I was thirsty my tongue tasted dust, 


Dust burdening your nipples.


I cry Alexandra when I am thirsty. 


Your breasts ooze the dirty waters of your dongas, 


Waters diluted with the blood of my brothers, your children, 


Who once chose dongas for death-beds. 


Do you love me Alexandra, or what are you doing to me?

You frighten me, Mama,


You wear expressions like you would be nasty to me, 


You frighten me, Mama, 


When I lie on your breast to rest, something tells me, 


You are bloody cruel. 


Alexandra, hell 


What have you done to me? 


I have seen people but I feel like I'm not one, 


Alexandra what are you doing to me?

I feel have sunk to such meekness!

I lie flat while others walk on me to far places.

I have gone from you, many times,

I come back.

Alexandra, I love you;

I know

When all these worlds became funny to me,

I silently waded back to you

And amid the rubble I lay,

Simple and black. 

The Coffee-Cart Girl-E.Mphahlele

The Coffee-Cart Girl 1

The crowd moved like one mighty being, and swayed and swung like the sea. In front, there was the Metropolitan Steel Windows Ltd. All eyes were fixed on it. Its workers did not hear one another: perhaps they didn't need to, each one interested as he was in what he was saying-and that with his blood. All he knew was that he was on strike: for what? If you asked him he would just spit and say: 'Do you think we've come to play?'

Grimy, oily, greasy, sweating black bodies squeezed and chafed and grated. Pickets were at work; the law was brandishing batons; cars were hooting a crazy medley.

'Stand back, you monkeys!' cried a black man pinned against a pillar. 'Hey, you black son of a black hen!'

The coffee-cart girl was absorbed in the very idea of the Metropolitan Steel Windows strike, just as she was in the flood of people who came to buy her coffee and pancakes: she wasn't aware of the swelling crowd and its stray atoms which were being flung out of it towards her cart until she heard an ear-splitting crash behind her. One of the row of coffee-carts had tipped over and a knot of men fallen on it. She climbed down from her cart, looking like a bird frightened out of its nest.

A woman screamed. Another crash. The man who had been pinned against the pillar had freed himself and he found himself standing beside the girl. He sensed her predicament. Almost rudely he pushed her into the street, took the cart by the stump of a shaft and wheeled it across the street, shouting generally, 'Give way, you black monkeys.' Just then a cart behind him went down and caved in like matchwood.

'Oh, thank you so much, mister!'

'Ought to be more careful, my sister.'

'How can I thank you! Here, take coffee and a pancake.'

'Thank you, my sister.'

'Look, they're moving forward, maybe to break into the factory!' When next she looked back he was gone. And she hadn't even asked him his name: how unfriendly of her, she thought ...

Later that winter morning the street was cleared of most people. The workers had gone away. There had been no satisfactory agreement. Strikes were unlawful for black people anyhow.

'Come back to work, or you are signed off, or go to gaol,' had come the stock executive order. More than half had been signed off.

It was comparatively quiet now in this squalid West End sector of the city. Men and women continued their daily round. A dreary smoky mist lingered in suspension, or clung to the walls; black sooty chimneys shot up malignantly; there was a strong smell of bacon; the fruit and vegetable shops resumed trade with a tremulous expectancy; old men stood Buddha-like at the entrances with folded arms and a vague grimace on their faces, seeming to sneer at the world in general and their contemptible mercantile circle in particular; and the good earth is generous enough to contain all the human sputum these good suffering folk shoot out of their mouths at the slightest provocation. A car might tear down the cross- street and set up a squall and weep dry horse manure so that it circled in the air in a momentary spree, increasing the spitting gusto ...

'Hullo.'

'Hullo, want coffee?'

'Yes, and two hot buns.'

She hardly looked at him as she served him. For a brief spell her eyes fell on the customer. Slowly she gathered up the scattered bits of memory and unconsciously the picture was framed. She looked at him and found him scanning her.

'Oh!' She gave a gasp and her hand went to her mouth. 'You're the good uncle who saved my cart!'

'Don't uncle me, please. My name is Ruben Lemeko. The boys at the factory call me China. Yours?'

'Zodwa.'

"People, arise! the world is dead"-Alan Paton

The Wasteland

By Alan Paton

The moment that the bus moved on he knew he was in danger, for by the lights of it he saw the figures of the young men waiting under the tree.   That was the thing feared by all, to be waited for by young men.  It was a thing he had talked about, now he was to see it for himself.

It was too late to run after the bus; it went down the dark street like an island of safety in a sea of perils.  Though he had known of his danger only for a second, his mouth was already dry, his heart was pounding on his breast, something within him was crying out in protest against the coming event.

His wages were in his purse; he could feel them weighing heavily against his thigh.  That was what they wanted from him.  Nothing counted against that.  His wife could be made a widow, his children made fatherless, nothing counted against that.  Mercy was the unknown word.

While he stood there irresolute he heard the young men walking towards him, not only from the side where he had seen them, but from the other also.  They did not speak, their intention was unspeakable.  The sound of their feet came on the wind to him.  The place was well chosen, for behind him was the high wall of the convent, and the barred door that would not open before a man was dead.  On the other side of the road was the waste land, full of wire and iron and the bodies of old cars.  It was his only hope, and he moved towards it; as he did so he knew from the whistle that the young men were there too.

His fear was great and instant, and the smell of it went from his body to his nostrils.  At that very moment one of them spoke, giving directions.  So trapped was he that he was filled suddenly with strength and anger, and he ran towards the waste land swinging a heavy stick.  In the darkness a form loomed up at him, and he swung the stick at it, and heard it give a cry of pain.  Then he plunged blindly into the wilderness of wire and iron and the bodies of old cars. 

Something caught him by the leg, and he brought his stick crashing down on it, but it was no man, only some knife-edged piece of iron.  He was sobbing and out of breath, but he pushed on into the waste, while behind him they pushed on also, knocking against the old iron bodies and kicking against tins and buckets.  He fell into some grotesque shape of wire; it was barbed and tore at his clothes and flesh.  Then it held him, so that it seemed to him that death must be near, and having no other hope, he cried out, “Help me, help me!”  in what should have been a great voice but was voiceless and gasping.  He tore at the wire, and it tore at him too, ripping his face and his hands.

Then suddenly he was free.  He saw the bus returning, and he cried out again in the great voiceless voice, “Help me, help me!”  Against the lights of it he could plainly see the form of one of the young men.  Death was near him, and for a moment he was filled with the injustice of life, that could end thus for one who had always been hard-working and law-abiding.  He lifted the heavy stick and brought it down on the head of his pursuer, so that the man crumpled to the ground, moaning and groaning as though life had been unjust to him also.

Then he turned and began to run again, but ran first into the side of an old lorry, which sent him reeling.  He lay there for a moment expecting the blow that would end him, but even then his wits came back to him, and he turned over twice and was under the lorry.  His very entrails seemed to be coming into his mouth, and his lips could taste sweat and blood.  His heart was like a wild thing in his breast, and seemed to lift his whole body each time that it beat.  He tried to calm it down, thinking it might be heard, and tried to control the noise of his gasping breath, but he could not do either of these things.

Then suddenly against the dark sky he saw two of the young men.  He thought they must hear him; but they themselves were gasping like drowned men, and their speech came by fits and starts. 

Then one of them said, “Do you hear?”

They were silent except for their gasping, listening.  And he listened also, but could hear nothing but his own exhausted heart.

“I heard a man . . . running . . . on the road,” said one.

“He’s got away . . . let’s go.”

Then some more of the young men came up, gasping and cursing the man who had got away.

“Freddy,” said one, “your father’s got away.”

But there was no reply.

“Where’s Freddy?” one asked.

One said, “Quiet!” Then he called in a loud voice, “Freddy.”

But still there was no reply.

“Let’s go,” he said.

They moved off slowly and carefully, then one of them stopped.

“We are saved,” he said.  “Here is the man.”

He knelt down on the ground, and then fell to cursing.

“There’s no money here,” he said.

One of them lit a match, and in the small light of it the man under the lorry saw him fall back.

“It’s Freddy,” one said.  “He’s dead.”

Then the one who had said, “Quiet” spoke again.

The man under the lorry heard them struggling with the body of the dead young man, and he turned once, twice, deeper into his hiding-place.  The young men lifted the body and swung it under the lorry so that it touched him.  Then he heard them moving away, not speaking, slowly and quietly, making an occasional sound against some obstruction in the waste.

He turned on his side, so that he would not need to touch the body of the young man.  He buried his face in his arms, and said to himself in the idiom of his own language, “People, arise!  The world is dead.”  Then he arose himself, and went heavily out of the wasteland.

The toilet-Dr Gcina Mhlophe

Gcina Mhlophe

Born in Hammarsdale , Kwa-Zulu-Natal, she matriculated at the Mfundesweni High School.  She is known as South Africa’s premier story teller.

The toilet

Sometimes I wanted to give up and be a good girl who listened to her elders. Maybe I should have done something like teaching or nursing as my mother wished. People thought these professions were respectable, but I knew I wanted something different, though I was not sure what. I thought a lot about acting… 

My mother said that it had been a waste of good money educating me, because I did not know what to do with the knowledge I had acquired (got).

 I’d come to Johannesburg for the December holidays after writing my Matric exams, and then stayed on, hoping to find something to do. My elder sister worked in Orange Grove as a domestic worker, and I stayed with her in her back room. I didn’t know anybody in Jo’burg except my sister’s friends, with whom we went to church. The Methodist Church up Fourteenth Avenue was about the only outing we had together. I was very bored and lonely.

On weekdays,

I was locked in my sister’s room so that the Madam (employer; not much used now) wouldn’t see me. 

She was at home most of the time: painting her nails, having tea with friends, or lying in the sun by the swimming pool. The swimming pool was very nearby the room, which is why I had to keep very quiet. My sister felt bad about locking me in there, but she had no alternative. I couldn’t even play the radio, so she brought me books, old magazines and newspapers from the white people. I just read every single thing I came across: Fair Lady, Woman’s Weekly, anything. But then my sister thought I was reading too much.

‘What kind of wife will you make if  you can’t even make baby clothes, or knit yourself a jersey? I suppose you will marry an educated man like yourself, who won’t mind going to bed with a book and an empty stomach.’

We would play cards at night when she knocked off (finished with work), and listen to the radio, singing along softly with the songs we liked.

Then I got this temporary job in a clothing factory in town. I looked forward to meeting new people and liked the idea of being out of that room for a change. The factories made clothes for ladies’ boutiques (small shops selling fashionable clothes).

The whole place was full of machines of all kinds. Some people were sewing, others were ironing with big heavy irons that pressed with a lot of steam. I had to cut all the loose threads that hang after a dress or a jacket is finished. As soon as a number of dresses in a certain style was finished, they would be sent to me and I had to count them, write the number down, and then start with the cutting of threads. I was fascinated to discover that one person made only sleeves, another the collars and so on, until the last lady put all the pieces together, sewed on buttons or whatever was necessary to finish.

Most people at the factory spoke Sotho, but they were nice to me – they tried to speak to me in Zulu or Xhosa, and they gave me all kinds of advice on things I didn’t know. There was this girl, Gwendolene – she thought I was very stupid. She called me a ‘bari’(a fool) because I always sat inside the changing room with something to read when it was time to eat my lunch, instead of going outside to meet guys. She told me it was cheaper to get myself a ‘lunch boy’ – somebody to buy me lunch. She told me it was wise not to sleep with him, because than I could dump him anytime I wanted to. I was very nervous about such things. I thought it was better to be a ‘bari’ than to be stabbed by a city boy for his money.

The factory knocked off at four-thirty, and then I went to a park near where my sister worked. I waited there till half past six, when I could sneak into the house again without the white people seeing me. I had to leave the house before half past five in the mornings as well. That meant I had to find something to do with the time I had before I could catch the seven-thirty bus to work – about two hours. I would go to a public toilet in the park. For some reason it was never locked, so I would go in and sit on the toilet seat and read some magazine or other until the right time to catch the bus.

The first time I went into the toilet, I was on my way to the bus stop. Usually, I went straight to the  bust stop outside OK Bazaars, where it was well lit and I could see. I would wait there, reading or just looking at the growing number of cars and buses on their way to town. On this day, it was raining quite hard, so I thought I would shelter in the toilet until the rain passed. I knocked first to see if there was anybody inside. As there was no reply, I pushed the door open and went in. It smelled a little – dryish kind of smell, as if the toilet was not used all that often. But it was quite clean compared to many ‘Non-European’ (an apartheid government term for black people) toilets I knew. The floor was painted red and the walls were cream-white. It did not look like it had been painted for a few years. I stood looking around, with the rain coming down very hard on the zinc: (sinkplaat – corrugated iron) roof. The noise was comforting – to know I had escaped the wet, only a few heavy drops had got me. The plastic bag in which I carried my book, purse and neatly folded pink handkerchief was a little damp, but that was because I had used it to cover my head when I ran to the toilet. I pulled my dress down a little so that it would not get creased when I sat down. The closed lid of that toilet was going to be my seat for many mornings after that.

I was really lucky to have found that toilet, because the winter was very cold. Not that it was any warmer in there, but once I’d closed the door it was at least a little less windy. Also, the toilet was very small – the walls were wonderfully close to me – it felt like it was made to fit me alone. I enjoyed that kind of privacy. I did a lot of thinking while I sat on that toilet seat. I did a lot of daydreaming too – many times imagining myself in some big hall doing a really popular play with other young actors. At school, we took set books like Busoni kuBawo or  A Man for All Seasons and made school plays which we toured to the other schools on weekends. I loved it very much. When I was even younger, I had done little sketches (short plays) taken from the Bible and on big days like Good Friday, we acted and sang happily.

I would sit there dreaming…

I was getting bored with the books I was reading – the love stories all sounded the same, and besides that I just lost interest. I  started asking myself why I had not written anything since I left school. At least at school, I had written a few poems or stories for the school magazine, school competitions or other magazines like Bona and Inkqubela. Our English teacher was always so encouraging; I remembered the day I showed him my first poem – I was excited I couldn’t concentrate in class for the whole day. I didn’t know anything about publishing then, and I didn’t ask myself if my stories were good enough. I just enjoyed writing things down when I had the time. So one Friday, after I’d started being that toilet’s best customer, I bought myself a  notebook in which I was hoping to write something. I didn’t use it for quite a while; until one evening…

My sister had taken her usual Thursday afternoon off, and she had been delayed somewhere. I came back from work, then waited in the park for the right time to go back into the yard. The white people always had their supper at six-thirty and that was the time I used to steal my way in (quietly go in without being noticed) without disturbing them or being seen. My comings and goings had to be secret, because they still didn’t know I stayed there.

Then I realised that my sister hadn’t come back. I was scare to go out again, in case something was wrong this time, so I decided to sit down in front of my sister’s room, where I thought I wouldn’t be noticed.

I was reading a copy of Drum Magazine and hoping that she would come back soon – before the dogs sniffed me out. For the first time, I realised how stupid it was of me not to have cut myself a spare key long ago. I kept on hearing noises that sounded like the gate opening. A few times, I was sure I had heard her footsteps on the concrete steps leading to the servants’  quarters, but each time it turned out to be something or someone else.

I was trying hard to concentrate on  my reading again, when I heard the two dogs playing, chasing each other nearer and nearer to where I was sitting. And then they were in front of me, looking as surprised as I was. For a brief moment we stared at each other, then they started to bark at me. I was sure they would tear me to pieces if I moved just one finger, so I sat very still, trying not to look at them, while my heart pounded and my mouth went dry as paper.

They barked even louder when the dogs from next door joined in, glaring at me through the openings in the hedge. Then the Madam’s high-pitched voice rang out above the dog’s barking.

`Ireeeeeene!’ That’s my sister’s English name, which we never use. I couldn’t move or answer the call – the dogs were standing right in front of me, their teeth threateningly long. When there was no reply, she came to see what was going on.

`Oh, it’s you? Hello.’ She was smiling at me, chewing that gum which never left her mouth, instead of calling the dogs away from me. They had stopped barking, but they hadn’t moved – they were still growling at me, waiting for her to tell them what to do.

‘Please Madam, the dogs will bit me,’ I pleaded, not moving my eyes from them.

‘No, they won’t bite you.’ Then she spoke to them nicely, ‘Get away now – go on,’ and they went off.

She was like a doll, 

her hair almost orange in colour, all curls round her made-up face. Her eyelashes fluttered like a doll’s. 

Her thin lips were bright red, like her long nails, and she wore very high-heeled shoes. She was still smiling; I wondered if it didn’t hurt after a while. When her friends came for a swim, I could always here her forever laughing at something or other.

She scared me – I couldn’t understand how she could smile like that but not want me to stay in her house.

‘When did you com e in? We didn’t see you.’

‘I’ve been here for some time now – my sister isn’t here. I’m waiting to talk to her.’

‘Oh – she’s not here?’ She was laughing, for no reason that I could see. ‘I can give her a message – you can go home – I’ll tell her that you want to see her.’

Once I was outside the gate, I didn’t know what to do or where to go. I walked slowly, kicking my heels. The street lights were so very bright!. Like big eyes staring at me. (simile) I wondered what the people who saw me thought I was doing, walking around at that time of the night. But then I didn’t really care, because there wasn’t much I could do about the situation right then. I was just thinking how things had to go wrong on that day particularly, because my sister and I were not on such good terms. Early that morning, when the alarm had gone for me to wake up, I did not jump to turn it off, so my sister got really angry with me. She had gone on about me always leaving it to ring for too long, as if it was set for her, not for me. And when I went out to wash, I had left the door open a second too long and that was enough to earn me another scolding.

Every morning I had to wake up straight away, roll my bedding and put it under the bed where my sister was sleeping. I was not supposed to put on the light, although it was still dark. I’d light up a candle and tiptoe my way out with a soup dish and a toothbrush. My clothes were on a hanger on a nail at the back of the door. I’d take the hanger and close the door as quietly as I could. Everything had to be set ready the night before. A basin full of cold water was also ready outside the door, put there because the sound of running water and the loud screech (high-pitched noise – skree geluid) the taps made in the morning could wake up the white people, and they would wonder what my sister was doing up so early. I’d do everything and be off the premises (erf – area house and garden is on) by five-thirty with my shoes in my bag – I only put them on once I was safely out of the gate. And that gate made such a noise too.

Many times I wished I could jump over it and save myself all that sickening careful-careful business!

Thinking about all these things took my mind away from the biting cold of the night (Personification) and my wet nose, until I saw my sister walking towards me.

‘Mholo ( hello in Xhosa), what are you doing outside in the street?’ she greeted me. I quickly briefed (informed her) on what had happened.

‘Oh Yehovah! You can be so dumb sometimes! What were you doing inside in the first place? You know you should have waited for me so we could walk in together. Then I could say you were visiting or something. Now, you tell me, what am I supposed to say to them if they see you come in again? Hayi (isiXhosa for No)!’

She walked angrily towards the gate, with me hesitantly following her. When she opened the gate, she tuned to me with an impatient whisper.

‘And now? Why don’t you come in, stupid?’

I mumbled my apologies, and followed her in. By some miracle, no one seemed to have noticed us. We quickly munched a snack of cold chicken and boiled potatoes and drank our tea, hardly on speaking terms. I wanted to just howl like a dog. I wished somebody would come and be my friend, and tell me that I was not useless, and that my sister did not hate me, and that one day I would have a nice place to live … anything. It would have been really great to have someone my own age to talk to. But I also knew that my sister was worried for me and she was scared of her employers. If they were to find out that I lived with her, they would fire her , and then we would both be walking up and down the streets. My R11.00 wages weren’t going to help us at all. I don’t know how long I lay like that , unable to fall asleep, just wishing and wishing as the ears ran into my ears.

The next morning, I woke up long before the alarm went off, but I just lay there, feeling tired and depressed. If there had been a way out, I wouldn’t have gone to work. But there was also this other strong feeling or longing inside me. It was some kin of pain, that pushed me to do everything at double speed and run off to my toilet. I call it ‘my toilet’ because that is exactly how I felt about it. It was very rarely tat I ever saw anybody else go in there in the mornings. It was as if they all knew I was using it, and they had to lay off or something. When I went there, I didn’t really expect to find it occupied.

I felt my spirits lifting as I put on my shoes outside the gate. I made sure that my notebook was in my bag. In my haste, I even forgot my lunch-box, but it didn’t matter. I was walking faster and my feet were feeling lighter all the time. Then I noticed that the door had been painted and that a new window pane had replaced the old broken one. I smiled to myself as I reached the door. Before long, I was sitting on that toilet seat, writing a poem.

Many more mornings saw me sitting there, writing. Sometimes it did not need to be a poem; I wrote anything that came into my head – in the same way I would have done if I’d had a friend to talk to. I remember some days when I felt like I was hiding something from my sister. She didn’t know about my toilet in the park and she was not in the least interested in my notebook.

Then, one morning, I wanted to write a story about what had happened at work the day before; the supervisor screaming at me for not calling her when I’d seen people stealing two dresses at lunchtime. I had found it really funny. I had to write about it and I just hoped there were enough pages left in my notebook. It all came to me and I was smiling when I reached for the door; but it wouldn’t open – it was locked! I think for the first time, I accepted that the toilet was not mine after all…

Slowly I walked over to a bench nearby, watched the early spring sun come up, and wrote my story anyway.

1)       Why did her mother think it was a waste of money educating her?

2)       Why was she locked in her sister’s room all day?

3)       What was her job at the clothing factory?

4)       Why did she have to leave before 5:30 am?

5)       Why was she sitting on the step outside when the dogs barked at her?

6)       Mention TWO reasons why her sister’s employer reminded her of a doll.

7)       In what circumstances do you ‘kick your heels’?

8)       What figure of speech is ‘the biting cold of the night’?

9)       Why is ‘The toilet’ a better title for this story than ‘The park’? She found the toilet much more special than the park. The toilet became her special place, her own private space.

Analysis

Character

The narrator – just finished matric. Came to Johannesburg to visit and stayed on to find a job.

The narrator’s sister, Irene – is a domestic servant in Orange Grove. Has a little room she stays in, in the backyard.

The Madam – young, paints her nails all day, have friends over for tea, swims at swimming pool

Two dogs – patrol the property

Gwendolene – told the narrator to get a lunch boy. She mustn’t read during lunch.

A day in the life of the narrator

v  Alarm goes of very early

v  Roll up bedding put it under sister’s bed

v  Go out with soap dish and toothbrush

v  Get clothes from back of door

v  Wash in basin of cold water outside

v  Leave premises before 5:30 with shoes in hand.

v  Sit in empty toilet reading and writing until bus is almost at bus stop

v  Go to OK Bazaar to get on bus at 7:30

v  Go to Clothing factory

v  Counts dresses, write down number and cut off threads.

v  Sits in changing room during lunch time.

v  Stops working at 16:30(4:30)

v  Waits in park for sister to finish work at 18:30(6:30)

v  Sneaks into house without white people seeing her

v  Have supper and tea

v  Goes to bed

The Wild Swans at Coole-W.B. Yeats

The Wild Swans at Coole

W. B. Yeats, 1865 - 1939

The trees are in their autumn beauty,  
The woodland paths are dry,  
Under the October twilight the water  
Mirrors a still sky;  
Upon the brimming water among the stones          
Are nine and fifty swans.  
  
The nineteenth Autumn has come upon me  
Since I first made my count;  
I saw, before I had well finished,  
All suddenly mount   
And scatter wheeling in great broken rings  
Upon their clamorous wings.  
  
I have looked upon those brilliant creatures,  
And now my heart is sore.  
All’s changed since I, hearing at twilight,   
The first time on this shore,  
The bell-beat of their wings above my head,  
Trod with a lighter tread.  
  
Unwearied still, lover by lover,  
They paddle in the cold,   
Companionable streams or climb the air;  
Their hearts have not grown old;  
Passion or conquest, wander where they will,  
Attend upon them still.  
  
But now they drift on the still water   
Mysterious, beautiful;  
Among what rushes will they build,  
By what lake’s edge or pool  
Delight men’s eyes, when I awake some day  
To find they have flown away?

City Johannesburg-Mongane Wally Serote

City Johannesburg *

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
This 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. 

Mongane Wally Serote