TAP-TAPPING Poem by Mafika Pascal Gwala

Rough, wet winds
parch my agonised face
as if salting the wound of
Bulhoek
Sharpeville
Soweto,
unbandage strip by strip
the dressings of Hope;
I wade my senses
through the mist;
I am still surviving
the traumas of my raped soil
alive and aware;
truths jump like a cat leaps for fish
at my mind;
I plod along
into the vortex
of a clear-borne dawn