POET AND FRIEND: MXOLISI NYEZWA

Mxolisi Nyezwa is a very dear friend of mine. He is a brilliant poet and writer. He is the editor of Kotaz, the multilingual literary magazine based in PE in the Eastern Cape. Mxolisi works in community projects where he facilitates writing and community publishing workshops for rural and township communities. He also assists small writers’ groups locally to grow a reading and writing culture in their communities. In 2000, his debut collection, Song Trials, was published by Gecko Poetry, a book of “associative poems which move rapidly through multiple dimensions. They encompass the spiritual, the political and bleakness of the everyday with the fluency of language and a compelling “deftness of image””. Commenting on his life as a poet in South Africa, Mxolisi says, “I realised perhaps much too early during my school years that I was fated to be powerless, vulnerable to the world completely. Maybe as clear proof of this fate I am not able to free myself from the physical and psychological restrictions imposed on me by the life in the townships.

The life here is always a fierce war, merciless like the wind. I am fascinated by the sea, in its patrimonial re-enactment of life’s birth and life’s re-burial. For me in the townships, where I’ve always lived, nothing happens without the silent consent of the sea stoning our human hearts.” His second collection, New Country, was published by UKZN Press. “Poetry is a simple way to remind us of our humanity. It guards against placing blind faith in the sciences which are constricting to the human spirit. In poetry we discover our basic selves.” Mxolisi Nyezwa.

THINGS CHANGE
for Malope

at least then, it won’t be like this
it will be a totally new suffering
like when a baby sucks his thumb.

it will be a totally new experience
(for God and history has provided)
we won’t have to blow our minds
about it.

it will be like a fresh song
from a sparkling songbird
it will be like that for us, as an old
woman sits neglected
on the chair of her memories
it will be fresher, more vital
for us… at least it won’t be like death.

and like death we die
every moment of our lives
it will be a totally new suffering
it will be like a song sung free
from a careless heart…

(our failure will have its dignity.)

 
for days i looked for my poems
for days i looked for my poems in the streets,
and since i could not find them,
light fell like a flower on the lonely square.
the light sounded the drum of a thud.
beauty came grovelling forward
begging,
and children went for days
without food.

The Poet's Failure:

We had words in us that we never said.
We could stand in these waterless alleys
and march into the wet rain.

We smelled like starved rogues, we stank
like dying corpses
Sailing the warm winds of our silence,
Searching in reckless shelters to cool our lips.

We struggled begging conciliation
Down the trodden tracks of cold hurricanes
Seeking out lost igloos,
We had words within these day-long blues-

Driven by cold emotions into the shades and shadows
Of a dying land, we had words that choked to be said-
And we never said them.



1 comment:

  1. Die koninkryk van die hemele het naby gekom.
    God het jou lief. Lees jou Bybel.

    ReplyDelete