Red, a poem by Rethabile Masilo

�for Mahlomola Motuba

Every word sown by hand arises and stands on its own, true
to the rows of what a farmer meant to plant. In the old south
they would grow cotton, white as a sheet against blue-black
evenings of panic, lit only by flames that lick the moment's
emblazoned cross. In Lesotho the past years have seen a soar
in crops that go against the hope of opportunity: red chillies
and beets, plums, heirloom tomatoes or even tart cherries,
all dying to imitate blood; up in the foothills where our soul is,
fruit is crushed and made to run down mouths of open wounds,
like liquid from the seso of Mokema, and that of Qoaling,
where fruitlets were plucked before maturity; red, red fruit
split open in Siloe, and overripe raspberries and berberis
everywhere splashed; fruit still on their branches awaiting death.
Plants rise up, stand according to where they�re sown, by whom,
and for what purpose, even as red remains the colour of severity.
A soldier�s boot crushed the currant of our nation�s heart, danced
upon tayberries and kharenate and, in a final act of contempt,
decided to gut every khunoane and ponaponana with its knife.
And why not? Nobody ever says or does anything. And while
red may be the uppermost arc of the rainbow, it is also the colour
you lose sight of first at twilight, when danger looms and you see
red, then nothing; and red is the pigment that life perceives
always under a hardening scab when it is time to heal again.
One day I'll take a hoe and go to fix the meaning of my life.

Folakha ea Lesotho