poem for Cape Town. white
cottony waves (like fluffy cash
crop your cousins gleaned from southern
American
plantations), they crash
against untamable
extremities of Earth, so glad
not to be
mutilated and reformed
by toughened brown
hands into bricks (subjugated
people suffer alongside desecrated
land unless settler capital
decrees a national park, meaning (for nations
of Capital, that is (not-brown nations), living
in the brick edifices) constructed
by brown hands). Cape Town a story
of prisons designed for tough
minds that were glad to trade open
blue sky for an open
conscience. the body
could be jailed only so the soul could run
more freely from township
to township proclaiming the fallacies
of white settlerdom. now, Cape Town lives
in a different sort of prison (not unlike
the uninhabitable spaces where many of the world’s
children crouch and crack their knuckles
impatiently), defined by walls of structural
adjustments and foreign direct
investment. Cape Town, your revolution
lives strong as the tenacious
waves venting their fury against
the shores of Good Hope.
they claim that hope for you,
Cape Town.
you must not drown in their anger
but rather ride it into
a new horizon.