The Foreigner Poem by Thabani Khumalo

They indeed told a blatant lie
And they absolutely had no speck of shame.
The parents and the guardians,
The brothers and the sisters,
The cousins and the friends…
And of all the times that hasted by,
Unhappiness only resided.

They said that the city was going to enchant me
(As much as it did them when the saw it for the first time)
by the splendor of its dazzling illuminations -
The lights that droop above every boulevard,
but it occurred to me that in Mamelodi,
Of all the times that hasted by,
Unhappiness only resided.

I am grieving the soul of a friend that perished crying
As loud as the cracking thunder of the rain.
We were chatting about natter on one second
And he was lifeless on the next.
He died burning like a hopeless piece of refuse
For the native men were summoned to rage
In contradiction of a foreign fellow and…
Of all the times that hasted by
unhappiness only resided.

a decade of my physical and timed existence wasted out -
A span of life lived in utter vain
Waking up to work and faithful enough for the showers -
The smiles are faked and the dialogues are made up
For the attention is always at a different place
Drifting off in human perversities and…
Of all the times that rushed past
Unhappiness only resided.