Maseru, Love

Once, when winter was refusing to leave
and spring could not push it out, and never
could a season stay as long as that,
I spent days on Kingsway sitting on the street railing
watching children shuffle
in search of work parking cars; I spent days there
with my heart’s chimera
pointed at such questions. And so it was that one winter
I finally withdrew into its sea,
as spring bounced to touch the mountains,
and took one home with me, and made him heir
to what my lifetime had collected in solitude.

(from "Letter to country", Canopic Publishing, 2016)

--https://goo.gl/6XL0Oy

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Toropo ea Maseru

The Children of the Real Lesotho

The children far from urban Maseru, the children of the real Lesotho,

(A country of mountains, anchored in the sky with the stones of Africa,
a land of beauty, death and love,
Of corn and useless flowers, cattle and Aloe,
Of wild skies and serene earth,
And women stooped to sweep the dirt and weep,
Without tears or fear that will show.)

They have been nurtured into greed.

Trained by other passing fools
Who come in clouds of dry
Dusty ignorance and rented cars to pass, not pause,
where God stores storms for future cause.

(And yes, I am certain there will be storms,)

The children sprung from great Moshoeshoe
He who offered heart and tribe and land to the desperate
Devourers of his family.

He who tried to welcome Boers,
Knowing their guns and locust history,

They now plead and curse for whites to give them candy.
“Sweets” cry the youngest ones,
“Give Candy” the older
“Give me some Candy please” the educated, skilled and bolder.

Whose grandfathers fought betrayers,
Leaving bloody footprints in their land
Step by step back into the loving mountains
Where they made their stand,

These kids, beg with open hand.

It’s terribly amusing for some, fun without a fee,
To fling candy out the windows and turn to watch them
Scramble for their cut and learn to be like those of us
Who know greed sensuously and pray to god, “I want it free.”

So they choose, in innocence, how they want to be,
And I brooded on how to best respond, in ignorance, how to make them see.

Can I tell them of their Ancestors, the trials they had to face,
Or the courage of the mothers and fathers of their race?
I can’t, I’m ignorant, a passing shadow of useless noises when he speaks.
They will grow and learn for years and I’ll be gone away in weeks.

There were but two times I spoke to them and thoughts passed from me to them.
Once I greeted boys with “Dumelang bo-ntate”¹ and they laughed and clapped their hands delighted with the linguistic capers of this monkey from foreign lands.

But they need to hear, or I need to speak, of the price that they will pay
On their trip from past to future, before they lay in deep red clay.

How to help these tender ones in their search to be like me?
I decided to roll the window down and holler,
“Ke e jele!” ²
© Pavo Real

¹Greetings, gentlemen. ( I am told this was startlingly age inappropriate).
²I ate it!

Ed’s note:
Pavo is right. The greeting is inappropriate for boys younger than oneself. The appropriate greeting would have been, “Lumelang banna,” or “Hello guys.” Sesotho is rather strict in the way one person addresses another. I hope you enjoy this magnificent poem. If you need further information on Sesotho greetings, check out this post.
~Ed.

The Reed-Nets of Suweira

See how these cut reeds float down
the Tigris to the reed-nets of Suweira,
through fields and farmlands
green and ploughed, allotments,
orchards; past the piers where
fishing boats tie up against the night,
sliding north of the Sasanid ruins;
through Babylon and Persia, sixty miles
as the bomber flies, twice that
twisting through tended groves
and dusty weed-blown lots.
Here the sun is hot as they float
in the main stream. Dark at night
they drift, tumbling the waters of the dead.

In the mornings, the fishermen of Suweira go
out in boats to free the reed-nets.

This happens every day -
two or three a day. We find them
in the net, which is there for the floating reeds.
Wait, his body is rotten, his belly is
cut open - he can't be lifted out.
Does he have a head? No, its been cut off.
Power up well drag him out.

See how they wind these reeds in plastic,
keep them on the shore till someone comes
from Suweira to take them east to Kut.

Has the body been shot, does it have bullet wounds?
Yes, his robe is full of holes,
Is the body handcuffed and blindfolded?
No, it isn’t, but his face is marked
and we found bullets.

So far we have received
about five hundred bodies.
They are men of military age.
We have also received about ten women.
Most have been shot or tortured.
They are much decomposed, so
you cant be near them for long.
They have floated at least three days
to come to Suweira.

We seek identifying marks on the body,
because he has no name, or anything else,
we rely on these marks. Sometimes the body
has a tattoo from which we can identify him.

My brother went missing was on his way
to Baghdad. He was murdered in Yusufiya
with a group of men. We found the body
of one who was with him he’d been handcuffed
and blindfolded and shot three times in the head.
There were clear signs of torture on his body.

We’ve been looking for my son
and three other men who were with him.
Some people told us to go to Suweira.
I came here. They said, Go to Kut,
I came to the hospital in Kut
and we found him with the others.

See how this dross that has
floated down the Tigris to Suweira
now rots in the heat: At the graveyard
they dust the bodies, bury them
shallow in their clothes in the section
for those from the reed nets.

We could wash the body with water
but it is often too decomposed.
The hair and nails will fall out
if we wash them, and that is haram.

6563. 26 May. Female.
Write down a description of her clothes.
What is she wearing? An embroidered gown...
Move her head from this side. Take a picture of her.

2656. This is her number. Put it close to her head,
OK, now throw the dust on her.

See, even as the dry earth settles,
more are coming on the rivers back,
gently rounding the many bends
down to where the nets of Suweira
strain against the unrelenting water's flow.
© Michael Cope
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based on:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6902024.stm


"Michael Cope was born in Cape Town in 1952. His father was the distinguished novelist Jack Cope. In addition to being a poet, he works as a writer, designer and goldsmith. He has published a novel, Spiral of Fire (David Philip, 1986), a volume of poems, Scenes and Visions (Snailpress, 1990), several chapbooks of poetry, and extensively on the World Wide Web. Ghaap, Sonnets from the Northern Cape is forthcoming from Kwela Books. He is a veteran performer of poetry, and has made a CD of jazz & poetry with Chris Wildman, Everybody Needs. [more...]"

Michael Cope

Easy Skanking

all saturday evenings
should be like this, caressing
your thigh while reading neruda
with his odes to matilde's arms,
breasts, hair--everything about her
that made him
a part of this bountiful earth--
lilies, onions, avocados--that fed
his poetry the way
rain washes the dumb cane with desire
or banyans break through asphalt--
this is the nirvana that the buddha
with his bald monks and tiresome sutras
never knew or else he'd never have left
his palace and longing bride--
the supple feel of your leg in my hands
for which i'd spin the wheel of karma
a thousand lifetimes, more
© Geoffrey Philp