Kaiser Street
The summer clouds congealed so thick
My brain could hardly take the pressure
Elections for a constitution, a president and assembly
That would not matter anyway.
All was predetermined. It was clear
The old order had murdered too many
To stand for long, with nothing to deliver.
In the beer gardens downtown
The smoke of bratwurst hovered constantly
The gap-toothed and sun-wrinkled men
Drinking to the death of their colony
Laying bets on the failure of independence
Apartheid-wasted and inbred
The girls too listless for a proposition
Of even the U.N.
I walked home alone
There was no-one in town to meet
The passing of the night, the age
Down on Kaiser Street
I'm not sorry for what they lost
I'm proud of my little part
Oh, how they protested when we gave out hoes
And machetes for clearing the bush
But if we had wanted to incite a war
There were bigger fields to set alight.
Ziggy Marley flew in for the ceremony
As his father had come to Zimbabwe
Ten years before. I watched the proceedings on TV
With my sweet wife sitting next to me
The reggae beats flew over the hillsides
The world, the party, the blue army
Moved in, moved on, and life returned
To Kaiser Street - now Independence Avenue.
I knew a progressive Afrikaaner
He thought he knew best, what would work for the farmer
He seemed to see the approaching tide
And killed himself, rather than hide.
Beyond the shacks where drunken families sleep
Ahead of me, a contourless plain
And a single black tarmac stripe
Running towards Eternity
The shore that constantly retreats
Cloaked in old shipwrecks and mist
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poem by Frank Bana
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