Poem
Mafika Pascal Gwala
TAP-TAPPING
TAP-TAPPING
TAP-TAPPING
Rough, wet windsparch my agonised face
as if salting the wound of
Bulhoek
Sharpeville
Soweto,
unbandage strip by strip
the dressings of Hope;
I wade my senses
through the mist;
I am still surviving
the traumas of my raped soil
alive and aware;
truths jump like a cat leaps for fish
at my mind;
I plod along
into the vortex
of a clear-borne dawn
From: Jol’iinkomo
Publisher: AD Donker, Johannesburg
Bulhoek: A tiny village in the Eastern Cape where, in 1922, the police and army shot about 180 members of a religious community.
Sharpeville: At a peaceful protest against the Pass Laws in 1960 at the Sharpeville Police Station in the Vaal Triangle, 69 people were killed and 180 injured.
Soweto: At a march of high school students protesting the imposition of Afrikaans as an official language of instruction in black schools, 23 students were killed.
Publisher: AD Donker, Johannesburg
Poems
Poems of Mafika Pascal Gwala
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TAP-TAPPING
Rough, wet windsparch my agonised face
as if salting the wound of
Bulhoek
Sharpeville
Soweto,
unbandage strip by strip
the dressings of Hope;
I wade my senses
through the mist;
I am still surviving
the traumas of my raped soil
alive and aware;
truths jump like a cat leaps for fish
at my mind;
I plod along
into the vortex
of a clear-borne dawn
From: Jol’iinkomo
Bulhoek: A tiny village in the Eastern Cape where, in 1922, the police and army shot about 180 members of a religious community.
Sharpeville: At a peaceful protest against the Pass Laws in 1960 at the Sharpeville Police Station in the Vaal Triangle, 69 people were killed and 180 injured.
Soweto: At a march of high school students protesting the imposition of Afrikaans as an official language of instruction in black schools, 23 students were killed.
TAP-TAPPING
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