Читать книгу Synapse - Antjie Krog - Страница 15

it’s him!

that’s Pa! my heart surges up in my throat but as I turn

the corner it’s an old black man

in a neatly darned Harris Tweed jacket like the one you’d

find in Pa’s winter trunk I walk behind him

and my eyes are glued to the too-big jacket shoulders:

what if this man was my father what if it was his fingers

fumbling with the plastic bag under his arm

what if my father was black and old and full of integrity

surrendering to his worn-out muscles

his polished shoes on their way to my mother exhausted

somewhere in an outside room actually I should

put my hand on his back and say: go well kgosi my

raven my beautiful kudu-head let me hold you tight because

you walk quietly like a staff flayed alone

as I turn away: my complicity unbearable. stuck

fast our present continues to die from our past