(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?
