Work Poem by Phiwokuhle Mpendulo Manana

Face furrowed and wet with sweat,
Bags tied to their wasp waists
Women reapers bend mielie stalks
Break cobs in rustling sheathes
Toss them in the bags,
And move through row upon row of maize.





Behind them, like a desert tanker,
A dust-raising tractor
Pulls a trailer,
Driven by a pipe-puffing man
Flashing tobacco-stained teeth
As yellow as the harvested grain.





He stops to pick bags loaded
By thick-limbed labourers
In vests baked brown with dust.





The sun lashes the workers
With a red-hot-rod:
They stop for a while
To wipe a brine-bathed brow
And drink from battered cans
Bubbling with malty mahewu.





Theirst is slaked in seconds,
Men jerk bags like feather cushions
And women become prancing wild mares;
Soon the day's work will be done
And the reapers will rest in the kraals.