hold his body close
to my heart one last time and milky tight to me tight
in my steadfastness tight
when I let myself go I am shorter more crying more aching
and suddenly thinned out I rock unwinged on my feet
my love joltneedled and bruised eternally powerless
he turns away to his bags
and my body tears open before me
the seams of my arms burst loose
and grieve bleeding after his loving nearing bodyness
his bodily being that came from me
from everything that was coal in me and uncharted
his bodied belovedness irredeemably overt
child that I loved as well with my arms
and his loudthroated unblemished cheeks of song
child
child of my breast
do not leave me
me and this burning unmade unpronounced godgalled fatherland
hold your ear to the tear in the skin of my country
Cynthia
Ngewu:
this thing
they call re-
conciliation
. . . if I am under-
standing it correctly
. . . if it means this
perpetrator this man
who has killed Christopher
Piet if it means
he becomes human
again, this man,
so that I, so that
all of us can
get back our
humanity
. . . then
I agree
then I
support
it.
exposition: Mr Barnard lost his humaneness he
could kill because he was no longer human
to forgive him would make it possible for him
to change completely and regain his humanity
to have lost her son has naturally
also affected Mrs Ngewu’s own humanity
if the killer inspired by forgiveness begins
to change in order to regain his shared humanity
it would open up for all of us the possibility
of reaching out towards our own full humanity
in other words I forgive you so that you can
change here become whole here
so my own interwovenness-towards-interdependence can be restored
and I can live out my fullest humanity here on earth
counter-exposition: Mr Barnard does not understand forgiveness in this way
he believes in the individual and that only Jesus can forgive him
through a forgiveness that will resurrect him in the afterlife
amnesty is a purely legal process because killing was following orders
with the same bewilderment that he received the unasked-for forgiveness
he now receives the rage and resentment of people who see
that he has not changed that he will never change
because he does not feel connected to them and they realise suddenly
that it was futile to try to weave interconnectedness into
the concrete bunker that lives inside Mr Barnard’s whiteness
miracle
I belong to this land
it made me
I have no other land
than this one
immoderate is my feeling for this land
gnarled and tough but unambiguous
I do not believe in miracles
but the peaceful liberation of my land
was a miracle – astonishing and filled with elation
it stays with me its incomparableness stays with me
I know that my country now burning with protest
is uniquely fabricated out of hope – it stays with me
even when everything shrivels falls short falls
apart gets slain becomes a travesty – like sand
the moment that has been granted us once sifts
in pendants of revenge from our unjust fingers
I belong to this land
it made me
I have no other land
than this one
petulant insulted we waste each other
with impunity shed one another’s lives
we wanted to create refuge for the poor the ordinary
the heroes the lovely the talented the maimed
but our graveyards sponge with the ignored the
ill the murdered the raped and the heartbroken ones
I know my country was fabricated
once from hope – it stays with me
it’s incomparableness stays with me
immoderate is my feeling for this land
dumbfounded we listen to the hairdryer sounds
of our leaders arid-air scorchings of nothingness
I do not believe in miracles
but the peaceful liberation of my land
was a miracle – astonishing and filled with elation
I have no other land than this one
we have become the prey of ourselves caught up
in ethnic avarice and a total incapacity for vision
it is as if we have no idea any more of how to live without
being violent anguished and brutal towards one another
I belong to this land
it made me
immoderate is my feeling for this land
gnarled and tough but unambiguous
I have no other land
than this one
I do not believe in miracles
but the peaceful liberation of my land
was a miracle – astonishing and filled with elation
it stays with me its incomparableness stays with me
(after David Grossman)
Lady