Poem
Salt River
cracked chairs and chicken bones
chips plastics and dented tins of all nations
bullet-stroked t-shirts, tossed in the canal
the quick-eyed slide of
calculation
Free Mandela! paint on long streets walls
where one day only slaves could prance, here:
sweet water weaves the salt river marrow down to the opening sea.
before concrete triumph perched on despair mountain people dreaming the
rainwind dark day
it grandly entered the one-breasted bay
most honoured stream, revered with reed songs.
the sweet and salt waters mingle, still, between her warm brown lips
everything that sups there, grows there, learns there
brings her joy
and acquires dual vision.
*
if this is the oldest continent
and the earth’s oldest gold is found in the little town of Barberton
in
Mpu
ma
langa
then surely, the world began
in
Langa
or, at least, a geological millimeter away
in Sea Point
where the cool shapely Atlantic leg
meets the warm ancient Indian leg
there, by the tidal pool, all that saltiness mingling and churning.
surely this firm right angle of sand is the poes of the world
right here at the turn of Beach
Road into Western Boulevard.
- For the cast of “Reclaiming the P...Word”
University of the Western Cape, 2006-07
T. Barnes