Gabeba Baderoon Biography

Pa came to collect us from school
in his white Valiant, the stern drive home.
Pa sat at the head of the table,
...

To step into another language
direct the breath
swell the mouth with vowels
feel the jaw configure itself around the word
...

To come to this country,
my body must assemble itself

into photographs and signatures.
Among them they will search for me.

I must leave behind all uncertainties.
I cannot myself be a question.
...

In my mother's backyard washing snaps
above chillies and wild rosemary.
Kapokbos, cottonwool bush, my tongue softens
on the rosemary's other name.
Brinjal, red peppers and paw-paw grow
in the narrow channel between
the kitchen and the wall that divides
our house from the Severos. At the edge
of the grass by the bedrooms, a witolyf reaches
ecstatically for the power lines.

In a corner in the lee of the house,
nothing grows.
Sound falls here.
Early in the day shadows wash
over old tiles stacked
against the cement wall.
In the cold and silence
my brother is making a garden.

He clears gravel from the soil
and lays it against the back wall.
Bright spokes of pincushion proteas puncture a rockery.
For hours he scrapes into a large stone a hollow to catch
water from a tap that has dripped all my life.
Around it, botterblom slowly reddens the grey sand.
A fence made of reed filters
the wind between the wall and the house.
Ice-daisies dip their tufted heads
toward its shadows.

At night, on an upturned paint tin, he sits
in the presence of growing things.
Light wells over the rim of the stone basin
and collects itself into the moon.
Everything is finding its place.
...

Most of the plants in the poem are indigenous to the Western Cape in South Africa.
The languages of the plant names include Afrikaans, a Creole language developed by
slaves in Dutch households in the Cape and drawn from indigenous Khoi Khoi and
San languages, Malay, Arabic, English, Dutch and Portuguese.

Asteraceae, Wild Rosemary, Kapokbos [cottonwoolbush] A medicinal plant.
Halleria lucida, Tree fuschia, Witolyf [white olive] A shrub that can grow to
12 metres. It occurs in forests among rocks on the mountain slopes, and has orange
flowers.
Gazania krebsiana, Botterblom [butter flower] A perennial groundcover, it
occurs on the flats or lower mountain slopes. Flowers range in colour from yellow to
orange and red.
Dorotheanthus bellidiformis, Ysplant [ice flower] Bokbaaivygie [deer bay
daisy] A tufted plant with flat, succulent leaves, it occurs on sandy plains. Flowers are
feathery white, pink or purple.
Leucospermum cordifolium, Speldkussing [pincushion] A shrub that grows
to 1.5 metres, it occurs on the lower to middle mountain slopes. Flowers are orange-
red and resemble a cushion punctured with bright pins.
...