29 leads to love

Salimah Valiani

• Publisher: Inanna Poetry and Fiction Series
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781771338769
• Topic: Literatur
• Subtopic: Frauen in der Poesie

In a world barely beginning to recognize itself as dazzlingly multihued, the erupting ecocide is teaching that while no accounting of complexity is complete, change is true and the sky, singular.

We are of parts fundamentally interconnected and overlapping.

If we choose it, this overlapping can become a continuum. A continuum of movement combined with still-ness, individuality reaching for the whole, loss and surrender, abandon and opening.

And of falling: an ever-falling, toward the intensive care that is love.

On love (xxviii)

how many ways can a heart be broken

departure

finality

staggering beauty

betrayal

rejection

being barred from continuing to make History

Mama Winnie

your death like your life

painted the world red

and broke our collective

feminist heart

someone once told me

I can count on two fingers

the times I’ve been lifted

held heart to heart

Mam’Winnie

how many times for you

*

it’s been said that research on

infant mortality in Alex

propelled you to activism

from then

‘daringly astute’15

you were there Mam’Winnie

when few leaders were

‘at a time of Sharpeville Massacre

at a time of Langa Massacre

Uitenhage Massacre

Matola Massacre

Maseru Massacre

Sebokeng Night Vigil Massacre

Boipatong Massacre

Winnie Nomzamo Madikizela-Mandela was there

and she protested

at a time of Robert Sobukwe’s poisonous death

Steve Biko’s gruesome death

Soloman Mahlangu’s execution at the gallows

Bheki Mlangeni blown by parcel bomb

Chris Hani’s coldblooded murder short dirty

coldblooded

Nomzamo was there and fiercely protested

from the time of the Federation of South African Women

to the time of ...