The Promised Land Poem by Niki Nicholas Nkuna

Seeing the Promised Land in her vision strengthened her believe and resolve,
To scale all higher and lower mountains, cross wide and narrow rivers,
Walk through thorny bushes with bare feet,
Through forests infested with all kinds of vicious creatures,
Walked and crawled, hands and feet bruised to bare bones,
Alas! A comrade from afar beyond the icy waters of the Atlantic Ocean,
Kept on striking the vast sparse of the sea,
With a long whip igniting a bright lightening current across the sea,
That kept on flashing in the mind of the gallant beauty,
Strengthening all her sights,
Her beauty, her body strength, her mental power,
Let alone her confidence, that overflowed endlessly,
Blighting the might of the protagonists of degradation,

The Promised Land, the beacon of her undying spirit,
Pride and stoicism, the pillars of her undying spirit,
Expectation of danger all the time, the cushion against painful eventualities,
Expectation of disappointments from unexpected quarters,
The cushion against painful realizations and eventualities,
Expectation of unwelcome tidings, the Edblo mattress against despondency,
Expectation of victory, the lightening of the yoke of oppression,
Incessant hope against endless mishaps, the driver of the nail into the Apartheid coffin,

Her appearance, bright and haggard at times, deception to the oppressor,
Her real self, hidden inside herself,
The inside that never crumbles albeit the inhospitable prison conditions,
Her skin, soft and tender, hard and coarse inside,
Incessant brutal abuse at the hands of the Apartheid masters,
Met with pretentious pain and subdued arrogance and determination,
Only letting her trusted baby outside in the middle of the night
And let it cry bitterly and longingly for the unbreakable centre trestle,
Her pillar of strength, Nelson Mandela,

With a stroke of genius, coming through a lightening current across the Atlantic Ocean,
She could transform all the wickedness she faced into nothingness,
She, the edifice that shows scares externally but never crumbled inside,
To her, capitulation would reverberate throughout the country and across the seas,
Lengthening the Apartheid span of life to the delight of the Apartheid masters,
The chirping of birds signal to her people to sing along
Against the inclement weathers of all seasons,
Her determination represents a garden that survives on scant water,
That comes from afar through a thin pipe, almost invisible to the watchful eye of the Alsatian hounds,

Seeing the Promised Land with confidence and conviction, dwarfs all Apartheid obstacles,
The resolve is bigger than Mount Kilimanjaro,
Bigger than the Apartheid bulldozers of Sophia town,
Bigger than the beauty queen herself, almost to her great surprise and satisfaction,

Alas! The trusted baby is crying uncontrollably, bitten by the society's pain of short memory,
She can't quieten it; her tongue is twisted to the ignorant amazement of the fruit pickers,
The baby is kicking her insides and she's bleeding from the nose and ears,
Suddenly she's chocking, the baby's legs are protruding out of her month,
Freedom benefactors are pushing it back, chocking her out of breath,
Laughing raucously like baboons and Orangotangos in the forbidden mealy fields,

Finishing the race brought her sweet and bitter experiences,
Like the icy winter winds and warm summer air,
Arthur Ashe pain for winning the race and losing the fight,
The pain of losing when she has thrown so many punches,
The pain of ostracisation beyond the mountain of arrogance and graft,
The anti-Apartheid rock inside her becoming the ever crying baby,
With no one to care for it, like ZENI AND ZINDZY (Nelson Mandela's daughters)
The victims of incessant incarceration and solitary confinement of the hard nut to crack, the beauty queen mother'
Niki January 2012