The Zulu girl
There is a certain
CALMNESS
About
The Zulu girl
It humbles me
Down to the ground
At a loss for words
To say, but that:
poem by LLM Mbatha
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Shall We Dance the Same Again
Shall we dance the same again
To the loud music, or soft one
And to the rainbow lights
On a floor full of invisible
People, only minding their step
Swinging you to my own rhythm
Inhaling the scent of your skin
Shall we dance the same again,
If the dance is all we can achieve...
poem by LLM Mbatha
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Let us be like rivers, Love
The Table shall never meet the Fuji again
Let us be like rivers, Love
Great rivers, not mountains!
On their epic journey to grace
The Land of the gods with much needed hope
Where an arid desert is the ‘mirror of heaven’
Great rivers run from a Great Lake
Ignorant of borders, boundaries or nationalities
They run
But no matter how long or how apart they grow
Great rivers are sure to become one sometime
At the edge of some distant sea
poem by LLM Mbatha
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Let's talk about weather baby!
I had red strawberries and a clear apple
For supper last night, finally spring has
Come, so let’s talk about weather baby!
About all the cold things and the hot
Things Nature can be! Are the flowers
Blooming up there? So you know
I love you but you don’t want me to
Because you won’t love me too
I say we talk about weather baby
Somewhere lukewarm where I hide
Special things, there my love shall rest.
‘Tis burning hot down here, too…
poem by LLM Mbatha
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Make that fall
For a bird to discover its wings
And its “natural” ability of flying
It first has to make a fall
From the highest possible point in space
Only after several such daring attempts
Is the art of flight acquired
And the sky-confidence obtained
The danger is real
But, so are the rewards
If you cannot make that fall
You will never know you can
You will crawl when in fact you can fly
There is an Invisible Hand
Its strength is the strength of the whiling wind
Its length is the length of all the rivers of the planet
There is an Invisible Hand
That will never let you hit the ground too hard
When you finally decide to make that fall
poem by LLM Mbatha
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Kwela (the S.A. Penny Whistle Sound)
A moment in time captured in a simple wind
Of a simple pipe
By a simple folk
I see black boys standing in a corner somewhere
In the middle of Johannesburg
Long before the ’76 Uprising
I see them blowing and swinging
Blowing and swinging
The crowd gathering, listening, moved!
Throwing coins in a hat
And then a yellow police vehicle
Would always come too quickly
KWELA, KWELA, KWELA!
Was all that THEY could say
In the city
In the township,
Purple notes
Purple tunes
A purple moment in time
I see happiness and sorrow entwined
[...] Read more
poem by LLM Mbatha
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What is in a language?
Language carries in it the history of a people
The history that begins way before
The conception of that particular language
Every myth, idiom, or story told carries
In it the memories of an ancient infancy
Of a development that comes in stages
As that of a child crawling, walking
Developing a thought, a philosophy
Creating poetry and song
What is in a language is not just relevant
To the people that use it, but it is also relevant
To the entire community of languages
Like the fragments of a great puzzle
Every language has in it the bits and pieces
Lessons to be learned; things significant
To the history of mankind, things significant
To the growth and development of all
poem by LLM Mbatha
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Hailstone Food
My father loved the rain
Rain with hailstones
Twenty years gone past
When green and blue
Was all I knew
No red of blood
Nor ‘supreme’ of white
Nor ‘beauty’ of black
Just green and blue and love
It rained with hailstones
White stones from heaven
My father knelt down
On wet September grass
His head to the sky
Few stones in his hands
My father said
‘‘Thank you Lord for hailstone food! ”
I recall less of other days
When it didn’t rain
Perhaps such days were spent
[...] Read more
poem by LLM Mbatha
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I Have A Dream Of An Africa
I have a dream of an Africa
A united Africa!
Self sustaining and self reliant
Able to produce
Anything out of nothing
And trade within her-self
And with the world at large
A proud Africa
Of a civilizing people
Like our Egyptian, and
Olmec ancestors…
I dream of an Africa that
Patrice Lumumba died for
Kwame Nkrumah stood up for
Nelson Mandela paid dearly for
An Africa of Haile Selasie I
An Africa of GIANTS
Where men are great, proud and dignified
An Africa of Cleopatra, Maqeda, Nzingha and Nyamazana
An Africa without genocide, starvation, or disease
[...] Read more
poem by LLM Mbatha
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