The Johannesburg Review of Books presents previously unpublished poetry by Sandile Ngidi.
~~~
Let someone hold saliva, go slow on broken souls
Three young men are nursing the family lawn back to health
As they chat and zol at intervals this warm June weekend
Mom insists they eat, her good habit since I was a boy
I give them water-diluted Oros, sliced brown bread with butter and red jam
Mom continues to craft me into a better human:
Offer food, let someone hold saliva, go slow on broken souls.
I pray that her art of the open hand is forever etched in my heart
Until spades and tears lull me to my resting banana patch.
Tonight at Jet d’Eau, Geneva’s giant fountain,
Humanity’s troubled heartbeat is resuscitated
See that tiny endangered but brave boat in the Mediterranean sea
All eyes on deck, mother hope is flying in the menacing skies
She is a warm human flag wearing the heart of a famished people
A tiny feeding tube determined to cheer the starved, the degraded.
~~~
Marula dancer
A night of utmost happiness,
your black belly button saying hello bra
your arms stretched in a lazy warm kind of jazz.
Your solid white crop smiling on your trim belly,
radiating the barren room.
Our hearts dangling in the breeze
Seagulls flying home,
tannin dreams winking at us like the small moon.
There are birdsongs on windows
And as the streets quieten, they close their soft hands.
Blood is breakdancing throughout our bodies.
Laughter and laughter
Like old friends meeting by happenstance.
Who is still alive, who does not laugh?
Only coarse salt …
Summer rains are coming,
And with them, endless servings of green raspberry rice.
Let’s stretch our legs,
Peel the husk off your shiny corn,
Deeping, swinging, madly, ’til,
Like a defeated wrestler, we rest on each other’s wet lot.
~~~
Beloved one
Son of my dead sister,
The pit latrine is overflowing
Blue flies swamp your world
Your joy song longs for the nectar bee
Even the wood collectors are too cold to warm your hands
Yet, because May is for the magnolia,
Son, come break your soil
Moth, smell the refreshing dampness
Your ancestors left you firewood in the cattle kraal
Spears with which to exorcise demons.
Although jail thickens the skin,
birthing its chitin fold
The beetle will teach you how to turn mud into gold
To unfold your hind wings for a smooth take off.
Author’s note
The three poems tell stories of love in its myriad and complex forms. The impossibility of its exactitude. Our stubborn desire for love even when it lies on our laps, utterly shattered. Or shamed. I am glad to be celebrating fifty-six years this year. Now slowly singing my way to sixty.
Previously unpublished, © Sandile Ngidi
- Sandile Ngidi is a poet, playwright, newspaper columnist and literary critic. In 2008 he translated Sibusiso Nyembezi’s classic Zulu novel Inkinsela yaseMgungundlovu into English, as The Rich Man of Pietermaritzburg.
