Hail in peace wherever you abode now, dear Nadine Gordimer
You white daughter of Africa, the pen-mistress of July’s people,
You are the lover of July, your holy months of literature
That similarly gave a ****** grave marriage to Maziz Kunene
The African saint of orature; And Okot P’ Bitek, the lion of Gulu,
July have wedded you to the sombre grave in the Jo’burg,
As its apparatchik, the menacing jaws of death feel humdinger!
O! Dear little daughter, cursed are the jaws of death
They have kept on wooing and wooing you relentlessly
They have yearned for your betrothal with mad jealous,
For your iconic position in white African literature,
In which you stand with soldierly embrace a Nobelite,
They have now taken you to their inner chamber nuptials in death,
Before anything; let them now pay dowry to your bothers;
J M Coetzee, Alex La Guma and Dennis Brutus,
For there’s is a competent herds boy, a black shepherd;
Ezekia Mphalele, his living soul will keep the cows
Off down Corner B of the troubled African Image.
Say hello for those you are with in the current realm,
Say hello to foremen and fore daughters of Africa
Those that chose to visit the realm of ancestor precociously;
Say hello to them; Angelo Maya and Doris Lessing,
Let their caged birds and blooming grass sing uproariously,
Marriama Ba and Margaret Ogola, African girls,
They had a long letter and the source of the river from black dialectics,
O! Dear old baby Nadine Gordimer, stand firm in face to face with nothing
Other than the present time you’re in; the Africa’s realm of living dead
To sing the ballads of anti-apartheid both in heaven and on earth,
The only true testament of your footprints on the global sands of times
That Nadine Gordimer, July’s white-African daughter is deadly alive!
