Valley of a thousand hills, green as the afterimage of blood!
did you not hear the poet's izithakazelo or the professor's ululating
responsive as the earth under our feet, as the rocky hills under an echo?

Valley of a thousand hills, green as the afterimage of blood!
did you not speak when I answered the call defiant as a black cockatoo
and my mouth opened to what hijacks sound: the absent, the uprooted?

Valley of a thousand hills, green as the afterimage of blood!
I will invoke you as the home- and heartland that isn't mine, the chiasm
of my African being that, like the Ancestors in Kunene's poem, walks tall on the horizon.