POETRY
What does it mean to leave the country—and the people—you love? To be uprooted from the soil that gave birth to, and nurtured you? To abandon both your past and your hoped-for future and embark on a voyage of uncertainty?
Refugee Song weaves together reflections from a journey back to the country of my birth, South Africa, with stories of refugees, voyagers, the displaced and dispossessed, mourning what has been lost, yearning for a place to call home.
Listen to me read poems from Refugee Song in Layers of Exile, a podcast on Writers Radio (writersradio.ca/podcasts/) by clicking on the button below. The podcast also includes a chapter from my yet-to-be published novel, Skin, and an interview with host, Ingrid Rose.
Incantation
Song, when it comes,
comes crawling on childhood’s knees,
torn and tender
comes blowing across the burning veld,
cradled in wind’s cracked palm,
sheds its charred skin,
scattering cadence and scale.
Song, when it calls,
calls me back
with its half-truths and half-lies, its half-promises
to pick out the sliver from the sinew,
the slip from the tongue,
the needle from the junkie’s arm.
Song moistens my parched lips,
fills in the blanks,
sucks the poison from my wounds,
kneels, and gives thanks.
Song stares through the empty window
out into the schoolyard,
runs its captive fingers across the names
scarred into the desktop
slips its restraints,
slips out through the back door,
spills into the riotous streets,
dances in the shanty shade
until it is beaten back.
Song sinks into waves’ gentle lap,
into farewells and horizons,
into tidal longing.
Listen,
as it makes landfall,
washes up on shoreline’s lips,
catches in ear’s cuckold shell.
Listen for its torn turn of phrase,
to the sinned for and against.
Listen for the foetal curl,
to the plucked umbilic note.
Listen
for the small song
inside the song.
Listen
for, until it is sung,
until it is heard