Maputo, By The Sea Poem by Frank Bana

Bandits on three sides, the ocean on the fourth
The city sat sparkling on its coastal berth
The sun rebounding from high windows and tin roofs

Apartments rising up thirty-three floors
Overlooking endless velvet sea
With creaking lifts, sporadic electricity

In those years you could walk around the streets
In safety all night long, but not set foot
Beyond the unmarked limits that were widely understood

With great excitement, I found that I was lodged
Above the national institute of records and books
But their stocks were all in Russian or by Marx

Neighbours living across the dark hallway
Brought me pastels and cakes on Family Day
And asked for eggs and sugar, once or twice

Walking to work and the foreign-currency store
With no furniture at home, refrigerator bare
Until a fisherwoman came with fresh shrimp to the door

The people's market empty, a single butchery
Streets devoid of traffic, a hundred thousand families
Living on donated rice and tomato puree

Planes approached the runway in a corkscrew dive
To avoid heat-seeking missiles, while armed convoys
Made the run from Swaziland to bring supplies

Then the presidential jet veered off course one night
And dived without warning into a foreign field
A successor negotiated a slow end to the siege

He called upon the spirits of investors from abroad
The streets filled up with produce, cafes reappeared
Business men and Party men held meetings of the board

Refugees came home to reclaim ancestral lands
Title deeds were traded, now the dispossessed remain
The city sparkles still, beside a sea of tin and cane.