On reading Vonani Bila�s longer poems, a poem by Rethabile Masilo -baylist
My father was born the same year as Vonani�s,
and died a few years after his: old age? Diabetes?
The weight of a heart swollen from atrocities.
Their blackness is the skin of an encyclop�dia
to the continent. They speak about us
when the sky throws boulders in our path,
and we duck and seek a means of cracking
those impenitent stones. Our mothers
live there with them, even as they remain here
breastfeeding the unfortunate of the world,
the luckless who populate the streets of history.
How to be men is how to love. The day I read
Vonani�s book of longer poems under my breath
as I staggered home was a day of miracles. I put
its pages in front of me and went from La D�fense
to Porte Maillot without an accident, without
some driver swerving to avoid me and yelling fils
de pute! to the cold shoulder of my ears. I flew
from Paris to Polokwane that evening, aware
of the scent of home, aware this was my chance
at cutting the long goodbye, and was whisked
off, when I landed, by another dream that put,
between the distance of my life and the return
home, my childhood and the chance to regrow
into a tree that houses birds of prey and knows
the world. I did know the world; but not the one
looked at so cautiously, the way a child observes
life, the life in Vonani�s book of longer poems.
and died a few years after his: old age? Diabetes?
The weight of a heart swollen from atrocities.
Their blackness is the skin of an encyclop�dia
to the continent. They speak about us
when the sky throws boulders in our path,
and we duck and seek a means of cracking
those impenitent stones. Our mothers
live there with them, even as they remain here
breastfeeding the unfortunate of the world,
the luckless who populate the streets of history.
How to be men is how to love. The day I read
Vonani�s book of longer poems under my breath
as I staggered home was a day of miracles. I put
its pages in front of me and went from La D�fense
to Porte Maillot without an accident, without
some driver swerving to avoid me and yelling fils
de pute! to the cold shoulder of my ears. I flew
from Paris to Polokwane that evening, aware
of the scent of home, aware this was my chance
at cutting the long goodbye, and was whisked
off, when I landed, by another dream that put,
between the distance of my life and the return
home, my childhood and the chance to regrow
into a tree that houses birds of prey and knows
the world. I did know the world; but not the one
looked at so cautiously, the way a child observes
life, the life in Vonani�s book of longer poems.
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