For Sizwe Vilakazi

 

Fearing electricity – only installed

in rural Kwazulu post-Apartheid –

would disturb and thus devalue their cattle

the village elders decided it should come

no closer than the main road to Bergville,

a mile or so from their scattered houses.

 

Though the night sky, with its myriads

and myriads of stars, stayed above

the ancestors’ houses unpolluted,

in time there were fewer cattle, fewer folk.

Young people still left for the townships.

 

***

 

On our last morning, the family’s

little girl and her younger brother took us

across the veldt to their uncle’s kraal

to see newly born twin calves. The children,

on the dirt path through high dry grasses,

moved like silence, but we, clumsy townies,

raised a flock of plovers. The spindly calves

were suckling, and watched us with startled,

curious eyes, their mother impassive.

 

***

 

As we drove north on the Bergville road

to join the N3 we passed a primary school

with a Coca Cola sponsored sign,

and slowly over the Drakensberg mountains

winter’s first clouds appeared.