Confession and other poems

Sarah Lubala 

Confession

I

My father tried to kill his first wife
in a house with wide windows
and yellow hibiscus

II

My love does not know
I have never stood naked
before a man

III 

For weeks I have tried to write an essay   
on ‘Black Death and Elegy’
I composed letters instead:
Maman,
I am writing to you from across the water
the years have been a heavy tide
against the shore of me 

IV

So much sits on the throat
the men on roadsides
the men in corridors
my wrists are living birds
small and keening inside me      

V

My uncle
gone some twenty years
telephones at dinner to tell me
he was once a child soldier

Oh Lord
the years kneel down

— —

An Inheritance 

I don't remember how it began
With water or without?
With trembling or without?
Satisfied or fainting?

How might we measure it?
The dregs of a season
one white confetti bush
the salt on your hands
an armchair honeyed in winter light

Did we sigh for the ease of it?
Did we think ourselves free?

As though our mothers are not ghosts
As though language is not a haunting

There is a power in calling a thing by its proper name

Not 'infidelity'
Let us say:
a history of disappearance
Let us say:
men forget their names

Not 'a Black man hits his
Black wife'
Let us say:
she is alone in a room
Let us say:
she is a rose in bloom

What of your names?
He who came by water and blood
bright edge of the knife
worn-knot of breath
bees in the throat

— —

The Women

      —for Karabo Mokoena and the other Lost Women 

There is never enough water
only the memory of it
only the burning wood
only the soft scuttle of mice trapped in the roof

We are tired of the men
in cars
in markets
in line at the post office

The days are bone-dry
we burn in our sleep
our very being is a running knot,
tightening

What is this sickness
that eats the bones of daughters?
Is there no balm?
Is there no physician here?
What can be done for the wound?

Spare us your burial hymns
your murmured intercessions
your tears

Give us back
our mouths