where the lights of the city are dancing
the trees' silence within eternal summer the ocean's silence
from which a new day is hoisted each morning
silence on the lawns where gray birds graze
silence of the poet his arm slashed by a rusty blade
parodies of masks turned toward the silent sky
citizens drunk on beer as soon as night's curtain
falls each one barricaded in silence
because too many words remain unsayable
those words that Sandile shrieked on stage and elsewhere
the way the rusty blade shrieked through the poet's arm

shacks on the outskirts abandoned villages within
women in flowered dresses waiting for the improbable
curious little monkeys by the roadsides
a stop beneath the heady marula the liquor tree
all at once I speak of a voyage to the heart of another desert

Translation: Marilyn Hacker