Rough Music: Selected Poems 1989-2013The night’s very restless inyanga is already by the pier, eyes shut, pacing and murmuring the 11th commandment of a new faith. The beer-stained guards have exhausted their shift umpiring since dawn the eternal struggle between mynahs and crows by the rubbish bins. The fishermen, past their third bottle of cane dream of grunters, reek of shad and complain that no ship was hooked even though they cast their lines far in the far gardens of foam. And there: the sea’s eyelid full of fins the factory sirens quiet at last the hooligan moon peers over the Bluff and the horses of the deep get restless. |
Contents
from Songs Shoeshine and Piano 1992 | 21 |
from Slave Trades 2000 | 37 |
from Rhythmskewed 2000 originally in Greek 1991 | 61 |
from The RDP Poems 2004 | 71 |
from The Book of Accounting 2008 | 111 |
from 80 Days Around the World the India Section 2010 | 121 |
from Insurrections 2012 | 141 |
from The Vespa Diaries | 149 |
Klerksdorp | 151 |
Evening Song Durban | 154 |
Marikana | 156 |
Back cover | 161 |
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Common terms and phrases
Africa’s Aurangabad bird birdshot blood bone boomslang boys chalo cracked cried crooning Dalits dancing dark dead dear Zigmund Gumede deep desert’s dream Durban Dyani eim gonna eyes fingers flowers gather glue gone grey hair Half-foot halfwayman hands haunt head heart Hello hide hill hunger strike hurt illal Lah inside Iran Johannesburg Johnny Dyani Klerksdorp Kokovoko Kokstad Kolkata KwaMashu KwaZulu Natal leap learn to love lives look lover lungs Macondo Marikana meerkat moaned moon murmur neck night Oh Lord One-Arrow pain Passepartout past piano we go poet prayed Qabula Red Sea remember restless rhythm sails sand scent scream searching shoeshine and piano shroud sing skin skull slave smile song soul spinning stab the rain street stupid sun’s sweat tear torso toyi-toyi trees tropical scars two-step Varanasi Vespa Vodacom voice walk walk in rhythm waves wind wire yellow