top of page
Emigrant
The Africa I left three times
has left me now
suitcases piled with clothes
three sizes too small
Dressed as a smiling domestic
she walked out and slammed the door
there’s no way back
save through this camera’s eye
My mother, there behind that door
unreachable, looks out
from her bedroom window
in West Park cemetery
Still young and beautiful
she parts the curtains
watches trolley buses
red for whites she calls Europeans
green for blacks she calls Natives
Downtown a train waits by a platform
bound for Sophiatown
Now comes a conjuring trick
a word misspelled
pieces of a puzzle that no longer fit
the Africa I left three times
and now revisit
gone forever
© Johnmichael Simon
2013
.
bottom of page