The Weight Of An Empty Hand Poem by Mpho Leteng

The evening does not slide into Lesoma,
it drops like a heavy blanket over the playground,
where the dust of our football boots still hangs in the air
a ghost of the game we had just finished practicing.

I walked behind the school,
my mind still tracking the bounce of the ball,
Nearby, the kraal of Mma Mokhweswa stood against the twilight,
a sanctuary of lowing cattle and the sweet, heavy scent of raw milk.
They were in there, the milkers,
tucked deep inside the shadows of the wooden posts,
tending to the evening's chore.

But peace here is a fragile thing.
They came without an invitation;
teeth bared, throats rumbling with a fierce, ancient hunger,
the dogs of the kraal charging across the open ground.
"Futsek! Futsek! "
The word left my mouth like dry leaves, having no weight,
no authority to halt their stride.
From the depth of the kraal,
the distant voices of the milkers called out,
stretching across the distance like frayed ropes, too far to pull the beasts back,
too thin to close the gap between teeth and skin.

I looked down.
My eyes scrambled across the earth for a stone
a weapon, a piece of old heritage to hold.
But the ground offered no miracles tonight.
There was no rock, no loose gravel.Only clay.
A stubborn, unyielding floor plastered flat into the earth by the heavy rolling of donkey carts and the grinding tires of passing cars.
A history of traffic, hardened into a smooth, silent ceiling.

I stood there.
A boy caught between the speed of the beasts and the stillness of the clay.
Hopeless, but not empty.
When the first jaw reached for my breath,
I did not look for a savior.
I closed my left hand into a fist
a tight knot of survival,
and drove it straight across the grey flash of its face.
The crack of bone against knuckle broke the evening silence.
A sharp cry, a sudden whimpering retreat, and the pack receded back into the shadows of Mma Mokhweswa's kraal.