26 Kilometres South of Ramatlabama
Everywhere the announcement prompted spontaneous
and often abandoned celebrations, a nationwide
street party which produced, hangovers apart, the word `mafficking’.
Lawrence James The Rise and Fall of the British Empire
Now they know how many holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall
The Beatles: `Day in the Life’, Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
The rain came, spluttered a little
then
the sky caved in
turned streets
into rivers, canals
cars into gondolas
but it did not save.
even
so much water
could not
wash away
three hours of Sun
that enough to set
the back to desert
re=set button
but all this suddenness
all this momentary change
did not phase the regular duo
parked outside SPAR as is
par
for this course
did not dissuade, de-energize or
diminish their ardour
as they sang, guitar twanging,
their blind, devoted hearts out, warbling
the Lord’s praises in Setswana
some man of the cloth did
earnestly translate
some time
before the rain
comes again,
muddies the picture, makes a morass
of once rock-hard ground
and then, on that day, the dials registering
a range
beyond all limit
our dear little Mafs
goes inland
Atlantis
simply disappears
from the map
talking
about maps
and disappearing acts
I wonder what happened to that smartest
of smartly-dressed beggars
that FNLA lost soul
brain scrambled by
Cuban artillery at
Cuito Carnivale
put his guerilla soldier training
to apt, and excellent use
setting traps
to strip me of
some taxi fare, pincer
movements to
catch me defences down and unable to rebuff
requests for bread money or other such,
for old shoes or suits or
anything he might make us of
(hard to figure where to start in translating that
crazy-sounding linguistic mish-mash
of Setswana, English, Afrikaans, his
mother tongue, and
language of the colonialist, in
this case Portuguese)
I wonder with all this whether he
possesses the language
to make
sense of all
the brutal wonders he has seen
****
Thing
that was promised
I start to wonder
at its whereabouts
if anyone
has seen it, truly,
whether it can be found
and being found
believed in
This day
I was searching
tonight i will
be searching
already this sounds like
conjugation, catechism/
like a wretched
little mandala
lapsing into lament
quick cash, hot
profit scheme aplenty
you nose them on your way down past me
past my old abode
as you
reach the place of new origins, fresh beginnings
the taxis crammed into
all available space
sometime lined up as if
ceremony-bound
in their serried ranks
Today in search of such things
I walk the streets, the chaos streets of much-
suffering humanity
follow
the cheap-shop shoppers and
open- market goers
down past the taxi rank, past stall after stall
selling assorted fruits and vegetables: the green
the red, the white, the yellow
(half the
colours of
the rainbow flag)
all pre-packaged in (suffocation alert for
unsupervised children!) tightly -closed polythene bags
lingering smell of
excrement
gets me thinking Freud, thinking
Lacan,
thinking all the psycho-social mess
of my internal world, thinking
classical Marxism, Karl and Friedrich,
speaking truth to a power
that seems
to have existed
from the beginning of time
****
Who are these people?
who are these people?
who are these people and wherein
lies their authority
why have they called a Conference
in happy old Berlin
to determine the
future
of all mankind?
So far from Africa, from
Mafeking,
in the centre of Europe
if they disagree over how the cake
is to be sliced
it will produce the war
to end all wars
longitude, latitude
we can compute it all
just enter the coordinates
we can figure out
what to do with the people
afterwards.
****
So quiet
this town
after all that l
furore
mission to civilize
every diamond
in the rough
but hold on a minute
some of those backwoods boors
got their hands
on some Mausers
are now
fighting a war with
an ace up their sleeve
almost (so naaby, so naaby)
took this town and wreaked
humiliation
watched the red
of a possession
sort of just
slip off the map
and yet
the ouens of Agincourt,
Plessey and Trafalgar
had
at the end, in the final act
cause to rejoice, no sudden
post-colonial lamentation
at which
Empire did dance so hard
that
working class feet barely shod
bled
the cobbled streets awash with the colour
of a truly British party
those old
Victorian uniforms safely stowed for
sixty odd years until
some sons
of the slave port
fished them out, changed the culture, blew
some minds
parodying the spirit of an
older time
mercilessly, and yet with reverence
(Oh how they mafficked themselves
silly that day
almost a community, almost
something my grandmother would call
“grand”
****
and now
the music is dead, the hope checked out,
everything grey as old memorial
where’s the blue, red, yellow, green
satin suits gone my friend?
where is the transmogrification
of the great concept album?
Da diddy
da diddy
da da diddy dada-ism
take all your experimental riffs on the subject to
the next 60s party
****
da diddy
puff daddy
so many rappers
on the street now
everyone’s a poet
everyone
got a tape
even Jesus getting blasted
Jesus
getting serious
beats for those feet
that walked
through the Gospels
and you
his disciple
St Peter of
the airwaves
having all the answers
keeping the keys to life
and life
is needed
to stop
this entropy
to stop this place grasping
at its own throat
simply
strangling itself
dust and stones
dust and
stones
habitat
of dust devils
lizards and cobras
meerkats and scorpions
no sign of
what once was
but you can smell it in the place
if the noise dropped
suddenly
and you were strangely alone
you could, I’m sure,
hear it whisper
hear those Long Tom shells
crash
and splinter
scratch around in the soil and you’re bound to find
old cartridges aplenty, British .303
and 7.62 mm Mauser
and the Belgian FN rounds
used at Rooigrond to dispatch
the right-wing invaders
****
Do not think
the stones are silent
do not think
them inert
that they have
done their duty
finished their task
that they have nothing
under Heaven nor Earth
to add to this discourse
that all things
now supposedly equal
they have had their say
****
****
Seraph, Soundbite, Magus, Parasite,
who is the one
who
always shadows you
seems as if
handcuffed to you?
seems to
hold you back
yet equally
clears your way?
has used their supreme authority
to afford you this licence
not just
to digress
but to go off
in wild arcs. at tangents?
to describe
in whatever system
of geometry
not just an arc
but an entire tropical circle
as if I were
satellite
thing
orbiting
thing
not of this Earth
but no need to go
stratosphere
I can exist
(co-exist) here
far more humbly
shrunk insect-small
I would still
be perfect fit
thinking thoughts
a scorpion, an ant,
a lizard might consider
review
on their merits
(their individual merits)
consult with regard to
further ratiocination
happy
just to
ponder, cogitate
relate
****
Ah!gatekeeper, my gatekeeper
glad you are here
glad to see
form your countenance
(its fiendish expression)
that you are
rubbing your hands with glee
that I should fall
in your field of focus
trade
a sharpening of the image
as night
draws ever closer
images
of failed promise, lost hope,
death, ending
and closure.
****
Suddenly, though,
returning pendulum,
find myself
pinned, unable
to escape, asked
to rewrite
my ending
back
where we were
thinking about these things words
observing
how they operate
how
at their behest
distinctions are dissolved, new
theories spawned, concepts created
for a word can do more than speak, outclass just remind,
can
touch, caress,
be restorative, be warm, be
kind
be
ice cold
have its wicked way
bring the rain, quench our
thirst of thirsts, wash
us yet again
a kind of baptism, salvation of
all
mythical kingdoms,
such as ruled by legendary, visionary king
(first the true king then
the revolution)
****
Ah, that blind duo, the tiny
SPAR orchestra
their songs of
redemption, absolution,
do they change anything?
is there anything you have learnt from them
the songs you
do remember?
the songs that you remember?
wish I could travel with you
where your mind goes
when it flies
far away, or
so close by
where it is now
I cannot say
simply
cannot see
need you to guide me
walk me through every
step
of the way
every word, every phrase.
we will get there finally