Synapse. Antjie Krog

hold his body close

      to my heart one last time and milky tight to me tight

      in my steadfastness tight

      when I let myself go I am shorter more crying more aching

      and suddenly thinned out I rock unwinged on my feet

      my love joltneedled and bruised eternally powerless

      he turns away to his bags

      and my body tears open before me

      the seams of my arms burst loose

      and grieve bleeding after his loving nearing bodyness

      his bodily being that came from me

      from everything that was coal in me and uncharted

      his bodied belovedness irredeemably overt

      child that I loved as well with my arms

      and his loudthroated unblemished cheeks of song

      child

      child of my breast

      do not leave me

      me and this burning unmade unpronounced godgalled fatherland

      hold your ear to the tear in the skin of my country

      Cynthia

      Ngewu:

       this thing

       they call re-

       conciliation

       . . . if I am under-

       standing it correctly

       . . . if it means this

       perpetrator this man

       who has killed Christopher

       Piet if it means

       he becomes human

       again, this man,

       so that I, so that

       all of us can

       get back our

       humanity

       . . . then

       I agree

       then I

       support

       it.

      exposition: Mr Barnard lost his humaneness he

      could kill because he was no longer human

      to forgive him would make it possible for him

      to change completely and regain his humanity

      to have lost her son has naturally

      also affected Mrs Ngewu’s own humanity

      if the killer inspired by forgiveness begins

      to change in order to regain his shared humanity

      it would open up for all of us the possibility

      of reaching out towards our own full humanity

      in other words I forgive you so that you can

      change here become whole here

      so my own interwovenness-towards-interdependence can be restored

      and I can live out my fullest humanity here on earth

      counter-exposition: Mr Barnard does not understand forgiveness in this way

      he believes in the individual and that only Jesus can forgive him

      through a forgiveness that will resurrect him in the afterlife

      amnesty is a purely legal process because killing was following orders

      with the same bewilderment that he received the unasked-for forgiveness

      he now receives the rage and resentment of people who see

      that he has not changed that he will never change

      because he does not feel connected to them and they realise suddenly

      that it was futile to try to weave interconnectedness into

      the concrete bunker that lives inside Mr Barnard’s whiteness

      miracle

      I belong to this land

      it made me

      I have no other land

      than this one

      immoderate is my feeling for this land

      gnarled and tough but unambiguous

      I do not believe in miracles

      but the peaceful liberation of my land

      was a miracle – astonishing and filled with elation

      it stays with me its incomparableness stays with me

      I know that my country now burning with protest

      is uniquely fabricated out of hope – it stays with me

      even when everything shrivels falls short falls

      apart gets slain becomes a travesty – like sand

      the moment that has been granted us once sifts

      in pendants of revenge from our unjust fingers

      I belong to this land

      it made me

      I have no other land

      than this one

      petulant insulted we waste each other

      with impunity shed one another’s lives

      we wanted to create refuge for the poor the ordinary

      the heroes the lovely the talented the maimed

      but our graveyards sponge with the ignored the

      ill the murdered the raped and the heartbroken ones

      I know my country was fabricated

      once from hope – it stays with me

      it’s incomparableness stays with me

      immoderate is my feeling for this land

      dumbfounded we listen to the hairdryer sounds

      of our leaders arid-air scorchings of nothingness

      I do not believe in miracles

      but the peaceful liberation of my land

      was a miracle – astonishing and filled with elation

      I have no other land than this one

      we have become the prey of ourselves caught up

      in ethnic avarice and a total incapacity for vision

      it is as if we have no idea any more of how to live without

      being violent anguished and brutal towards one another

      I belong to this land

      it made me

      immoderate is my feeling for this land

      gnarled and tough but unambiguous

      I have no other land

      than this one

      I do not believe in miracles

      but the peaceful liberation of my land

      was a miracle – astonishing and filled with elation

      it stays with me its incomparableness stays with me

      (after David Grossman)

      Lady