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ALUTA CONTINUA
ALUTA CONTINUA : FORCED REMOVALS
( Poet’s Note : I’m posting this poem here as a South African history student recently asked to interview poet on Forced Removals. I read this poem which he enjoyed. I thought it might interest other SA history students who too were studying aspects of the country’s Apartheid past. It first appeared in : A Collection of Memoirs on District Six titled District Six Memories, Thoughts and Images/ Attic Press, 2021, as part of a collection of nine poems on Forced Removals )
We willed concentrated power
circled in cobalt blue
fields of strawberries
and dagger beckoned
irrespective of consciousness
A sorry state of affairs when battles
between Darkness and Light
continued unabated
Aluta Continua !
How is this ?
To live as Spirit-woman, Tiger-turtle
waves of dragons fast and smooth
to digest one egg in a
fridge of bones
serve unquestioningly as
District Six dissolves
lymph longed for ten oranges
in a meadow with Ruth
on silvery Planet Mercury
Aluta Continua !
Far is luminosity when
a path was already cleared
A test is at the door
looking up at new windows
in flat townships
tugging at deep black
pools of wondrous confusion
in fright and resistance
she was so innocent !
Soft marshmallows stood in Sun
as delight and enticement
A battle of swords and cups
diamonds and diggings
Let go ?
A still pond attempting not to ripple
silent space in a battle of steel
I am here…my home dissolved
Whose to know the difference ?
Gulls swirled above surrender
to destinies written in cursive
cupboards filled with old clothes
burnished gold remained
stuck in crevices
Boxed up District Six
lay naked, bruised, torn
Aluta Continua !
Through lifetimes of sorrow
as step by step, inch by inch
chains loosen, shackles shake
under flat Table Mountain
ghosts in the District
watch then play
sucking dewdrop pears
for a sense of power gained
We are gone.
Aluta Continua !
A body bent down to pick
up offerings from begging
knelt in humiliation
or was it humility ?
as black energies flashed white
with faith to suck up survival
drink in a second what was
distilled in a fortnight of fasting
and maniacal meditations
that stank of spiritual exhaustion
in purple drunkenness
Cells were clear, open
hearts exposed
receiving offerings from Sky
and all that went before
all that was to come
A gong went round, round
pealing and pealing
forever, without end
still sores bled bright blood
star circles tinkered afar
grasping for that which
slipped in the distance
on a removal lorry
when all seemed lost
Aluta Continua !
Some say they prepared
a thousand years for a
single silent move
a lifetime of prayer
for an hour’s Grace
A sickly soul looked to
recapture what escaped
in the night
Cape Doctor blowing grey
sand soft tears
showing the way to
a new flight of stairs
©GhairoDanielsPoetry&Song
+-1997
Copyright ©
Ghairo Daniels
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