Ars Poetica by Rethabile Masilo | Poems Rethabile Likes
Ars Poetica
by Rethabile Masilo
During an empty period one still expects words,
accepts them like a betrayal and lives them.
There will be questions with no answers
for the day will be funereal. But when they kill a kid
and you receive babble from a three-year old,
name that time Babel. Let his mother's wails
frown on you, then add her cries to the child's.
Get turned into a fist at first, in apartheid jails.
Pielkop! Then become a dog. Kaffir! Gaan fok jouself!
In exile, beg yourself for release from the dungeon
where you put yourself, hoping to starve and die.
When you don't, let a book write itself with language
from the cruel parts of The King James Bible;
rise with it, unafraid to face what it tells the world.
Read from it like an echo inside every ear, in order
that you may grow a scab over all your wounds.
accepts them like a betrayal and lives them.
There will be questions with no answers
for the day will be funereal. But when they kill a kid
and you receive babble from a three-year old,
name that time Babel. Let his mother's wails
frown on you, then add her cries to the child's.
Get turned into a fist at first, in apartheid jails.
Pielkop! Then become a dog. Kaffir! Gaan fok jouself!
In exile, beg yourself for release from the dungeon
where you put yourself, hoping to starve and die.
When you don't, let a book write itself with language
from the cruel parts of The King James Bible;
rise with it, unafraid to face what it tells the world.
Read from it like an echo inside every ear, in order
that you may grow a scab over all your wounds.
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