If you meet me—A Goodnight Song to Apartheid

(for Nelson Mandela)

If you meet me sitting
Quietly, counting fingers by the moon
Like the chicken pecking bones
In the pain of winter,
Don’t think I need your tears.
 
If you meet me sitting
Quietly bathing in streams of thought
Like sad blues from the gallows
Like screams searching heaven
Don’t think I worship your name.

All these pains of drought

All these smiles of dying leaves
All these screams of a corrugated breath—
Wet blankets of colored birds
Stretching into dawns.

They are absorbing the day’s heat

They are gathering screams from the village
Laughing softly at your imperial dreams
With their hungry swords they will empty
The grief cared long by all prison-drowned souls.
 
And if you meet me again sitting quietly,
Whispering words on the back
Of the Wind don’t think
I’m roasting dreams
I’m claiming the sky like a Bird.