This poem inspired me in school to become a poet still one of my favorite poems. City Johannesburg – Mongane Serote This way I salute you: My hand pulses to my back trousers pocket Or into my inner jacket pocket For my pass, my life, Jo’burg City. My hand like a starved snake rears my pockets For my thin, ever lean wallet, While my stomach growls a friendly smile to hunger, Jo’burg City. My stomach also devours coppers and papers Don’t you know? Jo’burg City, I salute you; When I run out, or roar in a bus to you, I leave behind me, my love, My comic houses and people, my dongas and my ever whirling dust, My death That’s so related to me as a wink to the eye. Jo’burg City I travel on your black and white and roboted roads Through your thick iron breath that you inhale At six in the morning and exhale from five noon. Jo’burg City That is the time when I come to you, When your neon flowers flaunt from your electrical wind, That is the time when I leave you, When your neon flowers flaunt their way through the falling darkness On your cement trees. And as I go back, to my love, My dongas, my dust, my people, my death, Where death lurks in the dark like a blade in the flesh, I can feel your roots, anchoring your might, my feebleness In my flesh, in my mind, in my blood, And everything about you says it, That, that is all you need of me. Jo’burg City, Johannesburg, Listen when I tell you, There is no fun, nothing, in it, When you leave the women and men with such frozen expressions, Expressions that have tears like furrows of soil erosion, Jo’burg City, you are dry like death, Jo’burg City, Johannesburg, Jo’burg City.
Posted on: Sat, 20 Jul 2013 16:23:21 +0000
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