World of storms

(Krotoa’s soliloquy)

Afrikaner, the Khoi, people

lend me your ears

i didn't come to bury Van Riebeeck

nor praise him

I have come to recall

how those days, so cracked & chipped

were wrought

I have come to un-bury pieces of myself

And thus, one day, i came to work

in his house

the crockery washed, the beds made, the floors swept

by those tiny hands

While scouring the shore

for shells, barnacles, mussels

i had been taken; just 11 years old

removed

by men in breeches

Like a mussel, like a patterned shell, i had the honour of being 'found'

being found art

being picked off a rock

Yet Van Riebeeck was an honourable man

& – don't get me wrong –

my uncle, who did not ignite a war

to demand my return

was also an honourable man

Are we not all honourable?

And so, i worked with the tongues of angels

& so, i helped create afrikaans out of stray words, utterances, sighs

and so i wove, as with wool or cotton

portuguese, khoi, afrikaans

into garments of

stark coexistence

A harsh entangling

that drove the children of the sun goddess, the first people

further & further away

to distant edges

far from fort and company gardens

… To edges of

extinction

Visiting the clan

these small feet traveled, then sojourned

in splendid openness

of veld, tree & fynbos

ah, the gorgeous reflexology of belonging

of child-like laughter, playmates and a festival of clicks

Thus it came that

Van Riebeeck, on his recall, set sail like a boat

over oceans vast

& i, like driftwood, eddied ...

but, alas, he was

indeed an honourable man

And so Van Meerhof arrived

who i took to marry, & whose children that budded and grew in me

ranked out like ivy

across the land; did they

in the cradle that was my womb

taste the distrust and suspicion

i swallowed

as i broke bread at fort and village?

Crushed between, i die

s many times

a wheel spins & a rope of metallic links

uncoils. Who

will be the anchor in my

cape of storms?