Appropriations.
[21 January 2008]

“Welcome to Mbeki’s banana republic.”
Thus reads the headline in the Sowetan this morning.

‘We are rapidly joining the ranks of Nigeria, and Zimbabwe”. It
Continued.

It could as easily have read: “An inheritance ruined!”
They could have said.

The milk is spilled: the omelette awaits ruin;
For want of a light
The darkness will return…
For want of a light.

******************

No one will remember, that,
When it was being done:
The arrogant takeover; the
Cursory word of contempt,

As the newbies reached for the symbols
When the phrase was ‘who do you know?’
and also what do you know?
When the newly appointed toadies [who owed everything to their
Revolutionary masters
Held schtum when the outrageous was apparent.]
And the emperor’s non-existent rags began to wither on
A malformed leg. All now say
‘We didn’t know…’
We experience attention deficit.

We didn’t know it was so important;
That there would not be a place where we could appropriate
the stock
and take it over
For our own delicious ends.

******************

And how dare the people demand!
We gave them everything they have
So they must now pay
With their aspirations and their leavened joy.

Spend wisely said the trustees
Who were impolitely ignored
There were guns and bombs and loot
to be adored.

And all the best horses and all the new men
Could not put light where no facility
Began.

***********************

The citizens who were enraged
Burned the trains
And are now caged
Into their neighbourhoods
Where there are no jobs and
fewer goods
and Work is scarce, and money more so.
The Kenyans use bullets and
We use space
The pain is the same
and there is little grace.
We can’t stop the game
‘Atlas has shrugged’ The world is shaken: are we teleported?

The “mirror cracked
From side to side’ and we saw
Ourselves
Distorted.

All that we did
All that we courted
dispersed so soon: revealing our all
too waning
moon

‘For want of a nail.’
The end. So soon?

NiK [08]