On the day you get here, we would like for everybody to come and see…
As we stand upon the finished tail of Bertrams Street
right where Appolonia takes the baton and starts rising up
traffic light on the left anotha on the right,
a large Albertina Sisulu always interjects,
and navigates our ride around
Maboneng’s jagged aspirations
Look up ahead, drone your eyes above Ellis Park,
that wonderful picture,
sinews of Johannesburg facing back
against the sunshine
We will forget the death that now stinks up the city centre,
dark hallways into the doors of offices,
we are here to count one by one all those windows peeping
into all the clustered concrete shooting
facing up; inside them we were won & we were lost,
for decades on end we never owned
that office chair,
and our immigration starts again and again
we must count windows for what stillness they enclose,
for boardrooms once entertained
when the whites grew wings & took flight,
izinyoni leaving behind ages of golden,
left us reminiscing amid our own bright blinding
zindonga zaka MTN,
aged bridges withered,
intricate threads of y’ello—
connected as the network
black bodies mobilized, funnelled
through masihlalisane,
4 by 4 , from outside, through and into
uhambo lwethu heads up for labour guillotine
it all makes no difference to the Quantum
to have fallen off an assembly line in China
or Japan, it is all tin, all have thin walls;
and as we move, as you listen to road passing you under
you can tell exactly when the vision of all of you
moving inside round nosed motorcar
pierces air in the atmosphere:
you tell yourself
No here we are constant chasing after space and time’
No! now here we are immigrating—
Always going to the town,
thinking, isn’t it a trip
you’d wash behind your ears for
s’thombe sephasi,
a once over,
first the face,
twice under the pits—
be presentable,
says dutch echo in your ear,
be well dressed for baas,
burn bones of your butt
into plastic maroon bench
of a satiated putco bus
chews, chugs, swallows
black smoke,
farts—to and fro
lena iyay’bona isondela
iya ngakubaas
opposite of public
sector, in jozi’s private
parts, & no one wants to remember. E
