The Water Mouse
(Part 1: The South African detective)
The search, I must warn you,
Was led by a Zulu,
A shaman and officer,
‘The pride of Maputo’
Called Mr. Malungo,
They say, ‘a witch he once wed’,
And that he tricked her, just to keep,
The little hili that she fed...
(But the truth, is much stranger,
for you see, that ‘hili’ was his son,
and his wife, well, she just left him...
a bit of muti and a gun)
And as for ’ubuntu’,
Well, he had it all wrong,
For that term, in izulu,
Doesn’t mean:’**** you, I’m the one’,
And so the water mouse,
Swam against; the trusting current’s dead,
The foamy figures that beamed below,
Water mountain stead,
His little head catching sunlight,
Dots the liquids edge,
And as a late, blooming flower,
Sprouts amongst the round pooling red,
5 divers and 12 gunmen,
Now arranged in Malungo’s shed,
Whispering amongst themselves,
About, the bricks beneath his bed...
Summoned by the State,
To arrest a very sinister louse,
The famed and even ‘imagined’?
...Deadly, ‘Water Mouse’.
Heard of by many,
Seen by so few,
20 dead and counting,
To continue...
PS: Some South African concepts.
“Tsotsi”: means “criminal”
“Hili”: means “demon” (regarded as a sex demon who hides beneath beds that are
not on bricks and whom grants wishes if caught)
“Ubuntu”: common word in South Africa that means “we are all one”
Copyright © Francois Hillebrand | Year Posted 2011
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