The Johannesburg Review of Books presents previously unpublished poetry by Rustum Kozain.
~~~
The greatest love
I believe the children are our future,
teach them well and let them lead the way,
show them all the beauty they possess inside.
Give them a sense of pride, to make it easier;
Let the children’s laughter remind us how we used to be …
—Michael Wasser, Linda Creed; as sung by George Benson
The children have no legs the children.
The children have no feet they have no ankles.
The children they have no toes.
The children have no arms.
The children have no hands no elbows.
How do they wash their hands
when they must come and eat?
The children lie under the rubble
without their fingers. Under the
collapsed buildings the children
they have no fingernails.
No fingernails that need cleaning need clipping.
The children they have no shoulders
they have no shoulder blades.
The children have no knees no shins
nowhere to put some lotion.
No lotion on their cheeks peeled open.
The children’s milk teeth glisten
through the big holes in their cheeks.
The children have their spleens burst open.
The children’s skulls are cracked torn apart
bone blown open. The children have no eyes.
The children are torn apart small
torsos shorn from their waists and legs.
The small torsos lie here
the legs without feet lie meters over there.
The children’s brains lie in the open
crusted with sand covered in flies.
The flies land on the children’s drying brains.
The children are a stain of blood
small bodies smudged in sand and tar
by something heavy
what we cannot say.
The children each and everyone
have holes through the heart
through the head. We cannot say
by what by whom we cannot do not speak.
It is a mystery that deepens every week.
Every month the children die.
We pray to all our gods:
Let the children go.
We think of them we do not
cannot think of them the children.
The children look at us and say nothing.
The children do not go forth
nor do they come back. They are dead.
They are not alive and they are dead the children.
Previously unpublished, © Rustum Kozain, 2025
- Rustum Kozain is the author of This Carting Life (2005) and Groundwork (2012), both of which won the Olive Schreiner Prize, as well as, respectively, the Ingrid Jonker Prize and the Herman Charles Bosman Award. His poetry has been published in translation in French, Indonesian, Italian and Spanish.
