Love, let us live as we have lived, nor lose The little names that were the first night’s grace, And never come the day that sees us old, I still your lad, and you my little lass. Let me be older than old Nestor’s years, And you the Sibyl, if we heed it not. What…
Hail thou, the world’s salvation, Hail Jesus kind and sweet, Before thy Rood in gratitude I bow and clasp thy feet. Before thy holy altar My soul bows down to thee, I know that thou art present now, Be merciful to me. Those feet, which cruel iron Has pierced full deep and sore; Lord,…
I am in front of this feminine land Like a child in front of the fire Smiling vaguely with tears in my eyes In front of this land where all moves in me Where mirrors mist where mirrors clear Reflecting two nude bodies season on season I’ve so many reasons to lose myself On this…
Sheets of tin nailed to posts driven in the ground make up the house Some rags complete the intimate landscape. The sun slanting through cracks welcomes the owner After twelve hours of slave labour. breaking rock shifting rock breaking rock shifting rock fair weather wet weather breaking rock shifting rock Old age comes early a…
“Draw me a lion.”So I set my pento work. Produce a lazy, kindly beast . . .Colour it yellow. “Does it bite?”“Sometimes,but only when it’s angry—if you pull its tailor say that it is just another cat . . .”But for the most part, indolent, biddable,basking in the sun of ancient pride. (Outside, the sunlight…
Once only by the garden gate Our lips we joined and parted. I must fulfil an empty fate And travel the uncharted. Hail and farewell! I must arise, Leave here the fatted cattle, And paint on foreign lands and skies My Odyssey of battle. The untented Kosmos my abode, I…
My hat was run over by a trolley yesterday. This morning my coat took a walk to some place far away. This afternoon my shoes happened to get assassinated. — I’m still here? that’s just i t.
“The Soweto I Love” is an anthology of poems written by Sipho Sepamla. It was first published in the year 1977 as a direct response of Soweto Uprising in 1976, but the poem was, however, banned by South African Apartheid regime, which considered it as protest poems. “The Soweto I Love” contains 35 poems. “How…
To visualize what you can’t see: That’s the paradoxical pleasure of the mind. In the afterbirth of seeing, Death of imagination. To dally on the brink of reality: That’s the snug of life. In the capitulation of the summit, Paradoxical disappointment. Now is the legend beyond Become the cliche of the elements. Shall the synthetic…
They say the guinea-fowl lays her treasureWhere only she can find it.Akosua ‘Nowa is a gunea-fowl:Go tell her, red ant upon the tree. I met Akosua ‘Nowa this morning;I greeted: Akosua, how is your treasure?She looked me slowly up and down,She sneered: The man is not yet here who’ll find it! Akosua ‘Nowa has touched…