We Shall Be a People - Breyten Breytenbach

We Shall Be a People - Breyten Breytenbach

we shall be a people, if we will when we know
we're neither angel black nor whiteand that evil
is not the exclusive dominion of the other

we shall be a people, if we do not disarm
to darken the skies with popular posturing
everytime a poor person get a bite to eat

we shall be a people, when we bleed and mock the sultan
and the sultan's courtesans and clowns and councils of state
without being dragged off to court

we shall be a people when the poet erotically praises
the dancer's belly as bleached as a shell
and as sweetly salted as an oyster.

we shall be a people once we forget the dictates
of the tribe so the citizen on his knees may enter
the private kingdom of everyday lovemaking life

we shall be a people when the writer looks at a stir of stars
without crowing that our mother regions are more vertiginous
and fairer than a cock pecking at a moon in water

we shall be a people when the vice squad shields
the whore and the adulterous spouse against the thwack
of stones and slap of sticks in the street

we shall be a people when a singer like a canary
may chant a sourat of Rahman
at a mixed marriage in the Bo-Kap.

we shall be a people when the patriot raises the colors
only on sport fields and at beauty parades
and to remember the great flight -- just this, just this

and the victory angel on the town square
submits the sacred constitution to the bonfire's forgetting flames
and we be gorged on the stench of scorched verses and plumes.

for we shall be a people, oh my people, once we recognize
the exact beat of life's passion and death's urge

to dance, and learn to respect the danced confusion.