My Garden

My Garden

In the
Fortress of Johannesburg
I live within
Walls that
Safen my day and especially my night

There is the guard, seven of them, on roster smiling, uniformed in navy blue and shiny shoe, there is the boom, red and white, that opens and it closes out the unwanted (sight of they), there is the register that must be signed for visitors’ entry,

- only the invited are allowed in my walls
there is my door open
my windows are unbarred, - my cat jumps in and out, plump from the
feedings of neighbours,
I sleep silently and unlocked - save for the bright yellow security light
the one that shines day and night –

so that the poor cannot steal from me
so that they cannot take my neck, shoot my heart, splinter my blood into pieces of retribution that they lick with their tongues of snake and their hearts of hunger,
so that I don’t have to kick back (and out) in the balls of gout, or pierce eyes with tri-fingers blind

So that I live, in this city, this city of mine, City Johannesburg,

Oh Joburg I am tired of being scared, I am tired of being afraid, I am tired of being white
here in my rich man’s garden where my guards greet me and my roses perfume the air in their blousy lust of casual silence and prosperity,
here in my small flat where there is only a family of one, me and a cat, and food that piles and rots so that I throw it away, and it is excised
on Tuesday known here as garbage day.
Can I not live out there? Will my skin not disem-blanch at the sun one day when I escape from the protected walls, will I turn brown
Like everyone else
And then will I walk the streets
With my brothers and the sisters
The ones who want to hurt
Me now, now that I am white
And I cannot change that
I am white
Just like
You cannot change
That you are black and that deep in your recess
You hate me
Even though
I want to say sorry and I don’t know how.
In my garden I sit,
Today, 2007, right now.
Casually silently, the walls stand pretty
They stand, all around.