A writer recently reached out to me, saying that he found my blog while researching his father's home village of Ha Makoae (where I lived in Lesotho). He sent me the poem, which I think is so beautiful and captures the essence of the area wonderfully.
Home, a poem by Rethabile masilo
We drive along Senqu to join
our reunion. I had never seen mountains cry,
skulls in rock form weeping for what
was absent. Tears paced at an edge
to gush the gully. Perhaps wells
poured themselves onto craniums,
till earth could not take so much water,
red soil dark with moisture, graves
of ancestors who lived in caves
and ate people at the water table
of their daily bread. Mountains from
the top of Ha-Makoae call where a sun
blesses us in night-beckoned light.
We return to the cars, vacate trinkets
brought from the city to gift those who kept
this place alive, our absence in memory;
we empty our city all over the yard;
tomorrow men will stab a bull. Women
will steam bread in three-legged pots.
our reunion. I had never seen mountains cry,
skulls in rock form weeping for what
was absent. Tears paced at an edge
to gush the gully. Perhaps wells
poured themselves onto craniums,
till earth could not take so much water,
red soil dark with moisture, graves
of ancestors who lived in caves
and ate people at the water table
of their daily bread. Mountains from
the top of Ha-Makoae call where a sun
blesses us in night-beckoned light.
We return to the cars, vacate trinkets
brought from the city to gift those who kept
this place alive, our absence in memory;
we empty our city all over the yard;
tomorrow men will stab a bull. Women
will steam bread in three-legged pots.
