Abdullah Ibrahim/Toni Stuart
for the first mother: a litany
O Mother of two skins
O Mother of betrothal and betrayal
O Mother of two sins
O Mother of ash and animal fat
O Mother praying to two gods
who did you pray to, kneeling in the church?
who did you pray to, kneeling at the cairn?
O Mother of lust and love
O Mother bent by men’s dreams
O Mother of undiagnosed despair
O Mother praying to two gods
did you remember to pray for us?
O Mother disowned
by the people who birthed you
O Mother un-mothered
O Mother disowned
by the people who raised you
O Mother of brokenness
O Mother disowned
by the people you birthed
O Mother forgotten
O Mother, against your skin compassion never brushed
O Mother
O Mother
O Mother praying to two gods
did you remember to pray for yourself?
O Mother of our lost wildness
O Mother, keeper of our buried voices
unearth them for us
O Mother of our smouldering rage
set fire to us
O Mother of our forgotten wounds
weep with us
i am warm but shivering and
we stand like this
in prayer for a moment
i still don’t understand
how eyes can be blue
but they peer into my fear
Eva, a murmur of a question
he drags out the ‘E’, almost singing
my name… Krotoa,
i bite his bottom lip
chew it gently
teeth always know when to bite
hands cup tongues probe
how hair can be so soft
soft as down in my palm
hands strip clothes
hands strip skin
of clothes
***
the sand is still
with the memory of us
there is no stretch of this land
that has not been witness to my story
Robben Island
I deserted
I don't enjoy it here
squatting on this island
looking picturesque and mythical
- Siren Song, Margaret Atwood
even the south-easter stays away now
but her curves rove and return to shore.
look how she conspires with moon
to soften the appearance of her folds.
no one speaks of her barrenness
her vast, unending nothingness
stealing men away to their dreams
luring them further and further until
she seduces them across her hips
always trying to make herself fertile.
give me her fluid coaxing and
i will crash against his stone body
lure him back into this once warm love.
when his back is turned in sleep
i will sing a strangle of notes
against the granite of his limbs:
lapping lapping crashing and receding and
crashing lapping until he is shaped only by my will.
but no, the hips of her horizon held more sway
II. liquescent 2
the wind would hurt me
I have to bite myself before I'll heal.
- Change in Me, Kelwyn Sole
slow slink of skin stretch of tongue soft against unreachable swathe of skin stretch of
tongue, tonguing unreachable swathes of skin such sin such sin against skin, thin, and
tongue fat and thick against skin sinning against skin sinning tongues stretching slow
sliding soft on silent swathes of skin and mouths suckling mouths suckling secret nipples
lust is the only room in the body
to which men entrust their honesty
there are no homes to be found
in the rooms made by men’s arms and legs
stretch of tongue soft against unreachable skin stretch of
tongue, tonguing sin sin against skin,
against skin sinning sinning tongues
silent mouths suckling nipples
the moon spits in my face, laughs
at my desire to become liquid like her
III foresight
they say I am the reason the wind no longer blows
the Koina say I am the reason the seasons stand still
the Dutch say I am the reason the ships stand still
now I am Eva in my garden, deserted
now I am Krotoa wrapped in a kaross of no warmth
only Heitsi-Eb! knows what is to come:
my children will turn the silence of their backs
to me, De Klerk, Kruger, Smuts will all deny
the sweetness of my name in their blood.
These three poems are from a larger collection entitled Krotoa-Eva’s Suite – a cape jazz poem in three movements.