Montgomery Street Poem by Tapera Makadho

No more lilacs and roses on Montgomery,
Nor the chirping and chattering of birds —
Left only in stench, smog rising above,
Choking the memory of what once bloomed here;
Its voice is silent since Majawa left —
O companion of the aesthetic duet!
He rode his horse down the slippery bend,
And took the colour of the street with him;
We lost the tooth that held the pinion,
And the whole machine of beauty ground to dust.

Sorrow has engulfed Montgomery Street,
Creeping through its alleys like a morning fog
That refuses to lift when the sun arrives;
The once gentle puffs of morn, the zephyrs,
Now rising into the sapphire realm
Of sweeping, swaying tsunamis;
As if the very sky mourns what was lost
And weeps in the only language it knows.

Where are the painters of brush and palette
Who once gave Montgomery Street its soul?
Where are the poets who walked these pavements
And made cathedrals of its ordinary stones?
Where is the music that spilled from open windows
And baptised the ears of every passerby?
They have gone with Majawa into silence,
And silence has claimed Montgomery for its own.

Only a halo of dust remains triumphant,
As vestiges of summer's sweltering sky;
The dust that once was dreams and laughter,
The dust that once was song and colour —
Left are just the scars of Montgomery Street,
The shrapnel and the shards of time,
Embedded in the asphalt like old wounds
That never fully healed and never closed.

Could there ever be a new broom
With which to sweep away the gloom?
Could there ever rise another Majawa
To ride his horse back up the slippery bend
And plant new lilacs where the stench now reigns?
Could the birds return to Montgomery
And remember the songs they used to sing
Before the silence taught them to forget?

Gone are the pious, replaced by wayward souls
Who wantonly unroll their sins by night;
Yet beneath the sin and beneath the stench,
Beneath the halo of triumphant dust,
Montgomery Street still breathes;
Faintly, stubbornly, defiantly breathing,
Like a patient who refuses to be declared dead,
Waiting for the one who will return
And whisper its name back into the light.

For Montgomery was never just a street —
It was a way of seeing,
A way of being,
A way of walking through the world
With beauty as your compass
And art as your only law;
And that cannot die while one voice remains
To speak its name into the darkness —
Montgomery. Montgomery. Montgomery.