AYANDA BILLIE
Four Poems
Mindful
So young.
You are bereft of a future,
Though your real life had yet to begin.
So young you know.
You are talking like old timers
Lost in reminiscences,
So young so much.
Or perhaps this is your old age,
For the hour of your death is near.
So young you have lived.
As you well knew
That these days we don’t live
Until we grow grey and frail.
Sobukwe
Present times have erased your name,
New icons have taken the centre stage,
Smiling for the cameras,
Azania sobering at the corner.
In no time,
Their cold hearts
Will think of you,
An unchained mind.
Those who shared the shackles
With you in the Island,
Today are towers
With new posture.
They are sleeping with the lights on,
Afraid of the dark,
Nightmares in their mansions
With screams of so many.
It was your love for your country
Azanian child.
Breath of love that sustained you,
Those who love Azania will remember you.
Great Failings
We will leave this earth
knowing nothing,
learned nothing,
still lost in the light
dark as the day
we were born.
We are (still) chasing
symbols of our destruction
that clinch us
in sorrow forever,
poor in life,
poor in death.
Someday, My Love
You
My love, my beginning my end,
I have nothing
I can offer at this moment,
This you must know.
I am born of so little,
With ordinary love,
Chasing for tomorrow,
My distant future.
You have touched me
In time of penury,
In the heart of the hearts,
Giving direction to my life.
Bear it with me, my dear,
The dark cloud will be torn asunder
Someday.
As I loved
So gentle,
Vulnerable, sensitive
And yet private
Later you changed all that,
And told me that the future is not for us,
For which reasons are impossible to find.
That was the end.
‘Someday, My Love’ was first published in Timbila 2002. ‘Great Failings’; ‘Sobukwe’; and ‘Mindful’ were first published in Timbila 7.