Shut up and listen to treble clefs in the air, turbines tilting off their axis. To branches swaying and blades of leaves dancing in the wind.
It could be a serious matter that has to do with the lives of poor people. Slaves to minimum wage.
So when treble clefs were floating and turbines swirling amid Parliament's air conditioning, it was only fair that tempers flared.
We forget the contortion of our mothers' spines sometimes.
How they bend to fend for us with R20 per hour.
The magic they conjure up to feed us, clothe us and send us to school.
We forget sometimes that our fathers died in Marikana, where they stood on the opposing side of that R20.
How our mothers live on their knees, praying to clocks for a few extra hours in a day.
So, when the elders dialogue with time masters; shut up, you Steenhuisen, and listen.
When the Living Conditions of Households in South Africa survey still says whites earn five times more than blacks, shut up and listen.
Our bodies are mosques, they are churches.
Our being is a pilgrimage, an exodus. We are trying to free ourselves. These bodies are gardens. You just stop to smell the roses. We live in the dirt.
Shut up and listen to the crashing crescendo of raindrops when they collide before hitting the ground.
Do you understand that sound?
Do you hear how it speaks of a white lady at a corporate asking the tea lady, our mother with a cracked spine, why she is wet? Even when it is raining outside.
Do you hear how the white lady walked into her garage from her sitting room into her car?
Remotely opened the garage door and gate?
How she drove out without interacting with a single drop and parked in the basement of the building they both work in. Only to take the elevator up?
Do you understand what the crescendo means?
Do you understand how our mother stood up from her knees tired of unanswered prayers. Clicked back her vertebrae, walked to catch a taxi to town dodging raindrops under a teetering umbrella she bought from a Pakistani shop two days ago.
Look at her shabby clothing. Wetter than a dog’s nose.
Only her face is dry since her hand doubles as a wiper. At least that one works.
The same can’t be said about the taxi she is in.
The sun is still slumbering at the depth of the horizon. It has not conjured up energy to begin rising.
It is still many hours before cocks imagine they would crow this morning.
There is no time for mourning over the little things that die inside of her.
She has to catch another taxi.
Every day when she takes that second walk down Kruis, right into Smal and then Von Wielligh Street, straight into Noord.
There she stands in a queue of travelling men and women who are almost ready to be driven to the brink of their madness somewhere in the North.
Where telephones are loud, and corporate ladders are wobbly because that ground is not firm.
Mother with a broken spine, how dare this lady ask you why you are wet? When you explain this to her and she interrupts, tell her to shut up and listen!
@Rabbie_Wrote
This poem was co-written by Magnum Opus. Rabbie Wrote is one of three founding and current members in the ensemble of award-winning poets including Thobani Mntambo and Sibusiso Ndebele.
@OpusPoetry