Peace – My Beloved Country

Posted on April 21, 2015

In response to the terrible xenophobic violence in South Africa, and as a way of expressing my despair at an article that I have just read where the author is clearly trying to escalate this hatred by inciting South Africans against each other along race lines (cleverly playing the “blame game”), I have found this poem and published it below…

Somewhere an eagle flies
soaring o’er the dappled skies of Africa
Somewhere a tortoise cries
ploughing through the vast disguise of Africa.
A springbok dies and a day is born
The sun comes up to greet the dawn;
A child is sighing like a bird
And a nation is sounding a very new word.

Somewhere an apple train
waddles through the winding plains of Africa.
Somewhere a sparrow feigns
acting out the birthing pains of Africa.
A lizard leaps to his mother’s scorn:
‘Farwell, ‘ she says to her first born
A breeze is lifting a newly-fledged bird
And a nation is sounding a very new word.

Somewhere a new sunrise
burgeoning before our eyes in Africa
Has seen our children’s weary sighs
bursting into happy smiles in Africa.
An aardvark snuffles through the corn
And winks an eye at a golden fawn
A sunbird is singing like you’ve never heard
And a nation is sounding a very new word.

– Margaret Kollmer