Sequence for South Africa by Denis Brutus

1.
Golden oaks and jacarandas
flowering:
exquisite images
to wrench my heart.

2.
Each day, each hour
is not painful,
exile is not amputation,
there is no bleeding wound
no torn flesh and severed nerves;
the secret is clamping down
holding the lid of awareness tight shut—
sealing in the acrid searing stench
that scalds the eyes,
swallows up the breath
and fixes the brain in a wail—
until some thoughtless questioner
pries the sealed lid loose;

I can exclude awareness of exile
until someone calls me one.

3.
The agony returns;
after a crisis, delirium,
surcease and aftermath;
my heart knows an exhausted calm,
catharsis brings forgetfulness
but
with recovery, resilience
the agony returns.

4.
At night
to put myself to sleep
I play alphabet games
but something reminds me of you
and I cry out
and am wakened.

5.
I have been bedded
in London and Paris
Amsterdam and Rotterdam,
in Munich and Frankfort
Warsaw and Rome—
and still my heart cries out for home!

6.
Exile
is the reproach
of beauty
in a foreign landscape,
vaguely familiar
because it echoes
remembered beauty.

1975

http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2009/brutus261209.html