Black Looks

I’ll be your life when spring arrives. And
I’ll want to touch your black face again, see
your arms hoist work onto the belt like a behemoth
tossing things to outer space.

Our thoughts will meet in the middle, melt.
We shall drift to Kingsway where men smell
soap and honey, and mothers sell fruit,

a spring in our heel and love on our mind, now that
centuries have lashed us with their tongue, the moon
a cool, time of sand, street-lamps hanging
like heads of shame at the mention of your name
(I, too, have wondered why the moon, after studying
the world for so long, is not yet tear-shaped).

You are the spark that fired us from the coals of Grootvlei
into this season. You are glisten. Month after month
on our way to work we hear words of mouths,
we lunch on benches where the sun has banned our games,
sip warm Sparletta, laugh at worn jokes.

Your panga splits yam like a head, spills
swastikas of broken butterflies no sleep can remove,
nor cold from the land of night,
nor words that bane our thoughts.

Whether or not anyone reckons we’re good, our mountain
is at centre, a commitment with a myriad love-yous in it
unsaid.

If there’s a God looking he’s awfully quiet. If anyone cares.
I watch you throw your rucksack like a fleeing slave onto
the train of our lives. We meet in the middle for our lives.