DIVERSITY

These are the resonance
Of cultural diversity
Which unify nations

My African ness is resonant
A chasm in the womb
Of Mother Nature
Rooted in my blackness
The blackness of kings
My throne is poetic
That flows in river, ethnic
A peaceful transition
That recede, a wordy provision
A vision and not a delusion
To fore-fathers of lost tribes
Lost in the scorched lands
Ploughed by barefooted maids
With blood clots in hands
Strangers in their soft beds
Footprints of tears absconded
Tarred by an eluded husband’s thaws
Where the white man bestows laws
Half-naked bodies of segregation
Sweated evolution to emancipation
“I am African.”

“Look up young man.”

“Look up!”

The beckoning darkness is the butcher
Native blood scattered
The tribe, a glass shattered
The black child is landless
Headers of our cattle, useless
A virgin broken by iniquity
The initiation of boys dirty
Their white blankets a mirage
In the eyes of an old woman’s age
A triumphant war cry, desolate
Bones of a fortune-teller, late
The rains are a distant wish
Pale bodies of the sick, with none to wash
A country broken by antipathy
My bronze shack, a transmuted realism
Placed in the squalid land of tribalism
My sorrow lost in alcoholic spasm
Self-love in my squatter enthusiasm
Where the land is not pure
Where the land is not pure

“Look towards the mountains”

These are the resonance
Of cultural diversity
Which unify nations

The sun is setting
In the land of bondage
Where thoughts indigenous, damage
Eccentric characters retinues of darkness
In the shadows of the poor
Their mouthpiece, a tabernacle of diamonds
Glittering clouting sounds of greed
To meek impoverished seraphic beings with a mark
Stained by hands of savages
In the land of bondage
Where thoughts indigenous, damage
Bare witness to self-murdered souls
Black spills black on black for black
Solitude voices are my concussions of courage
In the land of bondage
Where thoughts indigenous, damage
Where thoughts indigenous, damage

These are the resonance
Of cultural diversity
Which unify nations

“How can I be free?”

How can I be free?
Where the mournful sun is setting
As pure as the Messiah
One who is most, higher
Who summons
The rise of the icy moon
Truth to the promise at noon
My way, my truth, my nature
I kneel in search of Kiblah
Hiding myself in obedience
The scarf, a symbol of forbearance
Mecca a destiny of assurance
Her doors the mouth of resonance
Which echoes sounds of guidance
In the land of bondage
Multiplicity is my stance
I am immune to all phobias
Meek to all twelve gates
My way, my truth, my nature

“Look!”

I am bound
Bound by the diversity
In my notion of nation
Printed in faith
In the womb of my birth
Once endemic fields of death
Which now embraces my resonant breath
Diversified in twelve ubiquities tongues
To infinity, to infinity


To infinity and beyond
My holistic voice of resonance
Not bound to any
Not spoken by any
Not heard by any
In the land of bondage
Where thoughts indigenous, damage

And, yet I believe
Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow
It will surely rise again

By Linda Sakazi Thwala