Sign language and other poems

Mangaliso Buzani

Sign language

The lead singer was Lahliwe, my mother, and Tukie and Tonogo were the backup singers. They sang Utloa sefefo samoea. We were their small congregation, we clapped our hands, our grandmother hitting the side of the wardrobe because we had no drum. We were the ears to the singers. I wonder if they are still singing together behind the moon.

:::

My grandmother fell inside the bathroom and hurt her ribs. After that she abandoned speaking, because when she spoke a pain like a broken bone stabbed her. That’s why she chose to use sign language. We phoned the ambulance, lucky it was near, it arrived in no time. Because it was me who was looking after her, I was sent with her in the ambulance to Livingstone Hospital. She was not attended to, she suffered in that hospital until she fell asleep. I went outside looking for

bread and juice, a diabetic patient mustn’t go for long hours without taking food. I woke her with bread, I ate crumbs only with my eyes. I also suffered in that hospital, there was nothing else in those 8 hours except polishing chairs with our buttocks.

:::

It was very difficult to cross the doorframe of the room with you grandma, without bending over to pick up one of your teardrops with a tweezer. You were a washing line made of bones, strange stiff clothes that fluttered in the wind. Your wrinkled face that was showing the last days of its beauty.

:::

The world had reduced you to dust, so in the space of a minute the wind blew you away; hence the reverend said dust to dust on your burial day. With a shovel, six feet under the ground I have hidden you. Now an invisible flower, you speak with me softly saying, Manga, Manga, you are not alone, Ukhona uNyameka, Nyameke is around. 

The house was swept clean

Dead but still alive, I punched the lid of my coffin up. The first particles of soil, small stones, dry

pieces of graveyard wood, had disturbed me in my deepest sleep. They all started running when I said my first sentence: “I’m not dead, this is my time to write, take me back to my maroon chair from my grandmother, to the cheap table my mother bought for me...” The reverend threw his collar and garments aside and ran, so did his congregation, my family, my neighbourhood. I dusted off my body and threw myself into a nearby river. I swam to the deepest places of the river free from shoes, socks, shirt, tie, trousers and underwear.

:::

Out of all the gifts we were given by God, I was given a glass heart. Someone broke it, now it’s bleeding. It’s cutting my flesh with its sharp pointed splinters. I keep on dying a slow death.

:::

They sat the coffin behind the curtain between the dining room and the kitchen. The mourners were there to welcome the body of the deceased. The welcome service started at 7am. Just after the reverend had opened the bible to say a few words over the body, the coffin shook itself very hard, as if it was saying No! to the word of God. The curtain fell down, the coffin continued to shake, making all the mourners run away. The shocked daughter asked, What is happening in my home? but the furniture had no mouth to say. And we too, we had no answers for what had happened. We concluded like all the locals, umamakhe betsiba, her mother was a witch.

:::

On his death day he was much sadder than on his birthday. His heart was a drumbeat. His eyes were

wide open, refusing to sink into the graves of his eye sockets. For the first time he took a broom, to take over what he’d always told his wife was a woman’s job. Today he wanted to pause death as if nature was a tape recorder. He took a feather duster, wiped off all the spiderwebs, washed the dishes. Death kept on knocking. He did a spring cleaning. The house was super clean... death kept on calling... the man kept on working... but death finally came in. He left his house, his spoon, his chair, his bed, his television, everything for another man, to use his cup for beer.

:::

Themba, you took your life before your eyes could see the destruction we are seeing in this country… everything fell down. I don’t even know how I finished this poem, because there’s nothing left, not even me.

Shrinking next to the flowers

The books always take my chair and send me onto the floor. I lie on my side, sometimes on my back, with an open book completely a sky over my eyes. I’m all ears to the returning birds of my neighbour’s tree. The raindrops cry out like donkeys, they keep me awake the whole night eating carrots. Tomorrow I will leave this room, jump into the grass, compete with grasshoppers in a how-high exercise. Who knows, maybe I can touch the moon and bring you back a sack of oranges from my mother who lives behind the moon.

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A knock on the door brings me back to the table to peel potatoes, make chips, cut the bread and quiet my stomach. It is dark: by mistake I cut my finger. It burns, sending sparks of fire around the house. At the corner I see the red chair of my grandmother, inside the glass of water I see her false teeth swimming – two little pink fishes with many bones, swords for sea horses. I’m no longer hungry. The cats are crying like babies outside, since the morning two tortoises have been making love, they cry, like me on the breasts of the woman I love.

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Your cry my cry our sex this moaning had made the reverend end the service early. We have irritated the ears of god, listen now somebody is knocking at the door. I can see it’s my mother with the bible inside her purse, knocking, and through her fist I can hear another voice that’s my grandmother. The voice in the distance getting closer and closer, grandma I lied to you, I said I was sick so I would not be able to attend church. 

I step on the carpet naked, the dust rises up, my sweat glides down, the grass grows tall, same as my fears. I send my grandmother back and forth to the front door and the kitchen door until you escape through the kitchen door… We made that old woman drop her weight from 80 to 60 kg in seconds. Grandmother I watched you shrink while your garden blossomed.  Now these wreaths on top of your coffin turn our eyes to bees, we dart from wreath to wreath trying to catch our breaths as we read the writing of each flower.