Tonight I cannot write
Of love won and lost,
Dreams dreamt and burnt,
Palm fronds silhouetted in the
moonlight,
Salty rivulets coursing down my
back
in the summer heat.
Tonight I cannot write
Of twilights in russet splendour,
Jacarandas raining down on my
graves,
Labyrinthine daily mundaneness.
Tonight, when flowers are doused
with kerosene
and set afire; when the craggy
moon spews blood; when nightingales
are strangled and sparrows hanged;
when humanity is splintered
to make coffins for the young
with old eyes;
when fetters festoon every heart
and hearth;
when streets resounds with the
footsteps of fear;
when they stifle, muzzle and
muffle, with the mob behind
baying for blood—your blood—which
would be ideal to varnish their
nation
which once was yours as well;
when to think is to feel
is to question is to die—instant
annihilation or a slow
dismembering of your memory, your
history, your very being.
When ghettos spill over and
smudge coffee tables, desks
and benches, parchments and
temperaments; when the dappled tree
shades where we walked scream an
eerie silence; when the letters
vaporise from the books we read; when
the lakes
freeze in the centre, afraid to
lap their shores,
and the peacocks forget to squawk;
when the cold stars sing dirges
for the newly dead and dying, in
a land where
they alone live who have already
died—
Things fall apart; the centre
cannot hold.
Tonight, with my son at my bosom
breathing baby’s bliss,
I weep for the ashes of my yesterdays,
and for his tremulous
tomorrows that shriek
with outstretched arms.
