THE POEM FOR MKANSI VUNENE

I am, Vunene: Vunene Mkansi –
My essential identity – my dark destiny?
Rooting me: sounding the rugged kranzes
The murmuring streams of the land –
Hear, in Vunene Mkansi, the soughing of the wind
The moving, inspiring, informing wind.

The whispering, winds of change …
Skakespeare says our little lives
Are rounded with a sleep – how strange
To hear his brief, grave truth, yet survives.
Unchanged, on the soughing of the breeze
The shared, waking wind
The whispering wind.

We inhale the wind, the invisible wind of life
Babies gulp the air on waking from the abyss of sleep
Alive, searching, yearning, aching …. Human strife
Against entering the eternal sleep to keep
The gusty, corroding, traumatic tornadoes… at bay!
The final doldrums… lost at sea… we weep
For the winds from Betlehem,
I wait for them.

With the spirit of the wind, I will find my soul
And my woken soul will soar !
For I am the future.

(c)HC Meintjes