Song Of The Lone Worker. Poem by Sarah Mkhonza

We swept the yard with grass brooms,
Stirring up dust that choked our throats,
Rendered us coughing and sniffing and sneezing,
Then we piled dirt by the roadside,
In piles so big and smelly all day,
Only to find it there the next day.
The garden boy had no garden,
Nor the kitchen girl the only kitchen,
Where once they toiled and looked at shovels,
Like over sized spoons that scoop the earth,
And throw it on heads that are empty,
Only to cry and call out with songs,
That said they were still hungry like yesterday.

What could we have done with laws of old,
That made us crack heads we scratched hard,
And combed hurriedly with thorny hands that itched,
For the money that would never be ours,
For life escaped the kind with hair like ours,
And went away to the vaults far away,
Leaving just banana peels on the road,
On which we slipped and fell headlong,
Into the streets we had swept so well,
Calling it paying the price of freedom,
For they did say freedom was like a breeze,
That blows in new waves like a current,
To leave behind dead fish from oceans,
So far away no ship can get there.

When the thing called life turns blue
We see the rain hoping it will rain money,
Only to find the holes on the roof,
Looking at us and round like coins
That fall on us for we let it in,
In a greeting that sounds like a song,
We heard when playing with the drum
It fell into with double sounds,
Only to find it falls on our heads.
When will we have a mine like theirs,
That lets money rain from below,
And shoot up like a fountain,
To build roofs that reach the sky,
And move around in rivers of traffic,
That flicker lights in the darkest night,
And shine afar like our bosses,
Who see further than the moon,
For their packages were long made,
The take home that never ends,
Even when their backs are bent double.