Sharpeville, 21 March 1960
"The native mentality does not allow them
to gather for a peaceful demonstration.
For them to gather means violence."
- Lieutenant Colonel Pienaar
1.
We went with wrists ready
For metal shackles
To clench
Their cold grip
Onto fire hot skin
Boiling with white rage;
The appropriate rage.
This situation has justification
In the predications they hold true
Where to some
Human is synonymous with
******* nature,
Dangerous and hungry for
Light white blood we
Must be caged
To prevent the massacre
We could create.
2.
A child’s body is not a hurdle.
But when fleeing,
Feet pounding on dirt paths,
Black with dark blood, leaking
From shafts of taunting revolvers
And throats of the permanently
Silenced,
What do you do but run?
5,000 bodies bound together,
Melding flesh with flesh,
Fusing unhinged bones to bones
Still cradled in their skin,
Line the street where
Puddles are forming next to
Concaved skulls emptied
By misinformed bullets.
Last thoughts and worries
Are forever splattered on faces,
Tracing red lines
On skin
Sooty black,
As dark as nights will be.
3.
Sixty-nine lay dead.
A rock they said.
When interrogations
Took place
A rock they said.
Empty hands laid
Palm in palm
But a rock they said,
This, they said, sparked
The worry
That made it right for them
To make bullets fall
Onto us like metal raindrops
From an angry heaven
Hungry for black skin
And black blood.
Hands digging into earth
For retaliation,
For blood they said,
But everyone else said,
The rock that flew
Was in hands white as light
As bright as the day was
They say.
If the rocks they said that,
Spurned uniformed egos,
Flew from ground,
To air,
To gunned men like they said,
Does it justify the dead?