The sheets are barely wrinkled. (Today is it? Is it today?) She rises in the blur of so many mornings. Keeps her own hours. From her broad bedroom window sees the hours advance. Will become so preoccupied with some idea, so obsessed with a task that she will wake up in the middle of the night and begin to think it, do it, her muscles straining from work. Wind pries sound from the loose parts of the house. A house humming with years. With so many doors leading from warm room to warm room where dust and ozone whistle through the open windows. (Part on part that startles.) Little impulses shoot up. A fire passing up through the soles of her feet. Stands up from her chair but loses her train of thought, mutters something, then sits down again, hard, a piston whooshing air up into her torso, causing a slow build of sound in her body.

She shakes the pillows to air them, causing a few white feathers escape. In contrast, she feels heavy and restless, something elemental flowing inside her, a cold feeling at the base of her spine that rise to the top of her head. And she feels herself rising, a body with a mind of its own. Through the window, through grass four feet high. Struck like a tuning fork, the solid air begins to move. Hears it moving, the whole field moving in a green tide. A run of music in her brain. (Some manner of light. Some manner of remembering.) Bringing the desire to weep.

White ropes dangle from the sky, extending dreadful heat. Interminable afternoon, one long agony. She walks about barefoot all afternoon, grows long and transparent. Seems to float out of her body altogether.

Slowly, she starts back to the house and her favorite room where the glow of lights turns the environment yellow, burying the metal cases (a few books, a handful, possibly more) in amber. Staining the floor yellow. Drawing a heat of high passion from the assorted paintings, tapestries, and photographs. A dead world that returns now to shatter the serene air and accuse her of all she has done and all she has not done. The letting and not letting. The withholding and the sharing. The insolence and the irony. The denying and not denying. The affirming and not affirming. Her desperate passion for being in the world.

Sometimes when she sleeps, she will reorient her head on the pillow, causing the earth to tilt, seesawing certain members of the dead from their graves into her consciousness. Wounded souls. (Would they have her abandon?) Wearing a cruel expression, Nelson—who else?–peers up at her. A soul inside her, not only her own. Encamped Uninvited. (What does it matter to have survived him?) Nourished by the joy of one who loved. Living out a love that’s over. The scandal of self-contradiction, of being with you and against you. Although he was never quite left this earth. Forever alive in all his mythic power and glory.

Dawn infuses the veld. It seems to rise from the grass, from the rocks and stunted trees, and mount towards the sky, a world in bloom. Another blank day clean of everything. She takes a few steps toward the view, raising her chin but meeting resistance, as though a hand were pressing down on her head. And in that poise, she holds still and tries to empty herself. Why, seeing that blood-red landscape, does she keep believing in the Christian God? (White man’s god.)  She who has seen all-too-much life and death. It was a time of great inhumanity. One who knows. Prisoner to eyes that have seen to hands that have done. Why does she have a familiar presentiment inside–the tumble of knowledge that ever person has–some combining of tenderness and hatred, compassion and revenge, mercy and horror?–the mark of all her struggles with the world. Blindly reliving the past and therefore backsliding (sin, vice, taint), purely a game she plays from within like fire inside fire, word inside word.

The ground begins to steam with heat, releasing a din of children’s voices—what she hears–that hang in the air, the only sound. The old wounds of nostalgia reopen. Mother of the Nation.

She smells words, hears smells, and tastes sounds. One used to weighing the spoken and the unspoken. To withdraw into herself and think—anything but that. Tense, heart racing, she fumbles through the morning, going through the motions of this and that. Tending to her garden. Mowing the lawn. Removing mud and leaves from the scuppers and drains. Mending the boom gate. Whitewashing the spongy light security wall. Picking up books and putting them down. Rapping her knuckles against the furniture. Knowing only halfway what she wants. Alone down to her bones. Waiting (longing) for some task—mission, emergency, tragedy–to announce itself, to pull her in and set her going again. The world around her keeps still.

Morning leaks into all the windows, drenching her clothing, scalding her skin, awakening all those parts of her body she had stopped feeling—feet, hands, neck, face. So much does it hurt, deep in her lungs, to breathe the air. (The future never stops wounding us.) Maybe it’s well that she’s unclean. (She removes her clothes and waits.) The violence of the senses and intellect that has confounded her all these years was the only way. She lived/suffered a glorious/notorious life as the victim of terrible edicts and soul-crushing cruelties. The unlived life that she carries like a fetus inside. A half-formed something that twitches and stirs, biding its time.

Nights when she wakes up every hour or two, her breath going wrong against her ribs. Sucking in air knotted like a fist. Until the moon punches through the window and snatches her into the clarifying dark of Bizana, Sharpeville, Liliesleaf, Robben Island, Soweto, Brandfort, then flings her back into the room, the walls pressing in like an artificial lung. Mere bits of breathing. Thinks she catches a glimpse of a body on the bed blazing white in the darkness but so quickly–empty of detail—that she can’t register any identifying features. (Stay with the body.) Her immediate thought, it is the soldier, can only be him, and the cry she heaves makes her feel impure, craven. Comfort in the thought that the living who once laughed laugh again.

She clicks on the table lamp but too forcefully, driving the house deeper into its foundation, a sunken place.  What light there is mottles her hands. Once she walked in the light of history. Heroic. Mother of the Nation. But she was also a junky enclosed in a life of addiction as in a mother’s womb. (A twin, both rational and irrational.) Only to go cold turkey then emerge one April into a different world, her habit kicked, a world that had grown golden around her. A world that made a lot of sense in all her feeling and fleshiness for the first time in years, hidden away as she had been for so long in the cocoon of a needle. (Heavenly Father, thank you.) One history ending, another beginning.

Nothing in the world can humble those who cannot be judged.

Rises and walks through the darkness lapping in the doorway. Puts herself before the piano. Seated thus, she feels something moving like water over her skin. The past drifting around her—once an addict, always an addict–the bulky weight of the piano anchoring her in place, keeping her from going under. She plays, music thickening the air. Touch is all. Touch and only herself to trust. A kind of knowing.

Sunday (Monday?) in the window. She can make out dark mountains rising against the softer darkness of the sky, a sky full of words (birds?). The sun promises nothing but long slow heat and cicadas lazing in the trees. Clouds in nebulous patterns. Leaves on the driveway. A family of deer whittling away at the grass. Hard light on the oak tree like a bandage over a wound. Wind bending whatever it touches. A bird repeating the same sound. An axe echoing in the woods. Vultures float slow-motion on currents of thinned air. Each being or thing singular, each distinct. The natural world in-step and on time. Polyrhythmic. Geography no matter. Hour of day no matter. Weather no matter. Winter passes through the body of spring into summer then fall. So long a war of elements, of jarring things whose natures clash. On all the trees, the buds push against the sealed bark, the tight containment of the past, the past that is nestled in the present. The swallows fill the trees again replacing leaves that winter stole, the branches alive with blackened wings.

She tries to draw every molecule of air into her lungs. Something fills her now—a warm weak happiness–and she smiles at herself. Settled by something she no longer tries to name. The thud in the heart, the upward flood of time bleeding out. (Always the elsewhere that lives in the mind.) Puts match to the Cohiba. The halo of one more good cigar. Smoke slides a shadow across her mouth. Black words. Rolls them around on her tongue. Words that contain all of what we know for sure about this life. Goodness. Mercy. Forgiveness. Grace. Compassion. Pushing the breath out, pulling it in.

As if drawn by a magnet, shadows begin to slide from beneath things, eager to reach her. Darkness puddling around his feet. Darkness up to her ankles. Her knees. Her waist. She abides in darkness. Spreads darkness wherever she steps. Dark weight slowing her feet. Houses began to flash on like matches, and in an instant summer is gone. She taps ashes from the cigar–what is scattered and cannot be gathered up—causing smoke to billow up from the tip and rise up to a three-quarters (give or take) moon. Moon lacquering everything with thick radiance. The light rests there as if it had come home.

An intense sensation of joy. Awe and astonishment. Paradise on earth. Paradise of earth. Paradise on earth.

Amashiti awashwabenanga kuyaphi. (Ingaba inamhlanje? Inamhlanje kanene?) Uphakama kwinkungu yenqwaba yeentsasa. Usebenza iiyure ezikhethwe nguye. Xa ekrobe ngefestile yegumbi lakhe lokulala, uyazibona zisondela iiyure. Uvele athi phithi yingcinga, athi ti yinto ekufuneka eyenzile ade aphuthelwe, ahlale ubusuku bonke ecinga ngayo, ayenze sekuqobeke izihlunu zomzimba ngexa yaloo msebenzi. Umoya nenwebu yawo zohlutha izandi kwiindawo ezigexa-exayo endlini. Indlu seyiculela ezanzi yenxa yeminyaka. Enenqwaba yeminyango, ngamnye ephuma kwigumbi elifudumeleyo uyokungena kwigumbi elikwafudumeleyo, nalapho uthuli lubeth’ umlozi ukuyokuphuma ngeefestile. (Inayo indawo eyothusayo, ke le). Iimvakalelo zihlasimlisa umzimba. Umlilo ovutha ezithendeni. Aphakame esitulweni sakhe, zimlahleke iingcinga, ashwantswathe, aphinde ahlale bhaxa phantsi, ngathi umpontshwa umoya esinqeni nge pistoni eyenza isandi esithe chu, siqokeleleka emzimbeni wakhe.

Uvuthulula imiqamelelo ukuze ibethwe ngumoya, iintsiba zayo ezimhlophe eziliqela ziphaphatheke. Xa ezithelekisa yena buqu nazo, uziva esinda, engazinzanga, kukho nto imzungezayo ngaphakathi, ingqele etsho ezantsi komqolo wakhe inyuke iyokutsho phezulu entloko. Uziva ephakama, umzimba eneengqondo zawo ezizodwa. Egqobhoza ngaphaya kweefestile, kwengca eyimitha enesiqingatha ubude. Umoya uqalisa ukuphekuza ngathi uyakhezelwa ngokhuni. Awuve uphekuza, kuhlokome lonke eloobala lixel’ amaza aluhlaza. Itsho intsholo engqondweni yakhe (ukukhanya okuthile, kananjalo neenkumbulo). Kunga ngathi angasothula esofelweyo.

Iintambo ezimhlophe zijinga esibhakabhakeni, zitsale ubushushu. Imini engena siphelo, ukungcungcutheka okungena siphelo. Uhamba ngeenyawo imini yonke, ade abe yinto ende elubala. Ngathi udadela ngaphandle komzimba wakhe kwaphela.

Ungcambaza esiya ngasendlini yakhe, apho ukukhanya kwezibane kujika konke okumngqungileyo kube ngumbala omthubi, kungcwabe neebhokisi zentsimbi (iincwadi ezimbalwa, eziliqela, mhlawumbi zinganizana noko) kuzombathise wambu ngombala otyheli. Kudyobhe naphantsi, kube tyheli. Kutsala umdla ovuthayo kwingxokelela yemizobo, iithungo nemifanekiso. Izwe elatshabalalayo, nelibuya seliphihliza umoya wenzolo, zimkhahlela ngezityholo zako konke wenzileyo nangakwenzanga. Ukuvuma nokwala. Ukuvimba nokwabelana. Indelelo nengcikivo. Ukwala nokuvuma. Ukungqina nokuphika. Ukulangazelela kwakhe ilizwe.

Maxa wambi xa elele uphothula intliko yakhe emqamelelweni, kujikeleze ihlabathi, liguqule amanye amalungu osapho lwakhe, aguquke emangcwabeni ayokutsho kumva-ndedwa wakhe. Imiphefumlo engxwelerhekileyo. (Angayintoni ukuyityeshela, bethu?) Gqhi ombathe inkohlakalo ebusweni, uNelson— ingangubani kakade omnye?– umthi ndwanya esweni. Uphefumlo ongaphakathi kuye, hayi owakhe kuphela. Imbacu engamenywanga mntu. (Kubaluleke ngantoni kakade ukusinda kwakhe kuye?) Ukondliwa lugcobo lalowo obe(m)thanda. Ukuqongqotha ugqibezela uthando olungasekhoyo. Iintloni zokuziphikisa, uzingcatshe wena buqu. Nangona engazange alishiye ncam ihlabathi, ntonje waphila naphakade kumandla akhe nozuko olungummangaliso.

Unyezi luzixuba emadlelweni. Ukukhanya kunyuka ngoqaqaqa, kuphume ematyeni, kudlule emithini edodobeleyo buqabele busingise ngase sibhakabhakeni—ihlaba elichumileyo. Eny’ imini engena nto kwakho, ecoceke kwaphela. Uthatha amanyethelo abembalwa esiya kubuka okungaphandle, akaphukamisa isilevu ahlangane nomlo, ngathi kukho isandla isicinezela sithoba intloko yakhe ngenkani. Kanye kuloo ntobeko, uyazinza ezama ukuzithuthula. Kutheni akuqwalasela lembono-mhlaba ibomvu krwe okwegazi, ekholelwa kuThixo wamaKrestu (glebe uThixo wabamhlophe)? Yena lo sele ebone lukhulu kakhaka ngokofuka nokuphila. Yayi lixesha lenkohlakalo engathethekiyo. Isazi. Ibanjwa kumehlo abonileyo nakwizandla ezenzileyo. Kutheni nje enobulumko bemveli‐‐ la mvuthuluka yolwazi ingaphakathi kumntu wonke‐- bambi badibanise ububele nenzondo, uvelwano nempindezelo, inceba nengozi?‐‐ uphawu layo yonke imizabalazo yakhe nehlabathi. Ephila okwempumputhela, ephinda-phindana nosekudlulile, engaziboni uqhwayel’ emva (isono, isihendo, uchaphazeleko), konke kungumdlalwana awudlala ngaphakathi, ofana nomlilo ovutha ngaphakathi kuye, ingama ngaphakathi egameni.

Umhlaba uqalisa ukutsha bubuhushu, ukhuphe ingxolo yamazwi abantwana—le iviwa nguye‐- ilenga-lenga emoyeni, ukuphela kwesandi esivakalayo. Aqale avuleke amanxeba amadala eenkumbulo. UMzalikazi we Sizwe.

Unukiselwa ngamagama, eve amavumba, angcamle izandi. Umnt’ apha oqhele ukukala athelekise okuthethwayo nokungathethekiyo. Atshonele kuye ngaphakathi ecinga—neyiphi na ngaphandle kwaleyo. Umincile, intliziyo ibetha ngokukhawuleza, ukhubek’ oko kusile, eman’ ephatha oku, ayeke okuya. Ahoye isitiya sakhe. Abethe kucheb’ ingca. Asuse udaka namagqabi axinge emijeleni nasemiseleni. Alunguse isango elikhulu. Agutyule oladonga lumhlophe lokhuselo lungathi sisponji . Achola-chole iincwadi, azibeke phantsi. Enkqonkqa ifenitshala ngeminwe. Engayazi ncam into ayifunayo. Elilolo nditsho nasemathanjeni akhe. Elindele (elangazelela) into yokwenza—ubizo, ingxakeko, intlekele‐‐ ide izazise, imtsalele ngakhona. Kodwa ihlabathi elimngqungileyo lime ngxi.

Intseni ivuzela ezifestileni zonke, imanzise impala zakhe, irhawule ulusu lwakhe, ivuselele onk’amalungu omzimba wakhe ebengasena zimvakalelo—iinyawo, izandla, intamo, nobuso. Akubuhlungu kangaka ezantsi emiphungeni yakhe, xa ephefumla umoya. (Ingomso alide lipheze ukusonzakalisa.) Mhlawumbi kulungile ukungacoceki kwakhe. (Ukhulula iimphahla zakhe alinde.) Yayingekho enye indlela ngaphandle kobundlobongela beemvakalelo nengqiqo obudala bambhida yonke leminyaka. Waphila/wahlukumezeka ubomi bozuko/ bodumo elixhoba lemimiselo eqatha neenkohlakalo ezophula umphefumlo.

Ubomi angabuphilanga, nabuthwala ngaphakathi kuye okosana olungekazalwa. Into engekamili yukaphi emana igqushalaza ikhaba-khaba ngaphakathi kuye, izinzele ixesha layo.

Ubusuku apho avuka rhoqo ngeyure okanye ezimbini, umphefumlo wakhe uphuma kakubi ezimbanjeni zakhe. Uphefumla umoya ushwabene okwenqindi. Ide inyanga inqinde ifestile, ityhoboze, imthwebulele kwisithokothoko sobumnyama base Bizana, Sharpville, Lilieslief, Robben Island, Soweto, Brandfort, igqibe imjule le, imbuyisele egumbini, amadonga amfuthanisele okomphunga owenziweyo. Amaqhekezana omphefumlo. Ucinga uthe tshe umzimba ebhedini, omhlophe qhwa kobobumnyama– ngokukhawuleza, ungena zimpawu zakuchongwa zibonakalayo.(Hlala nawo umzimba). Ingcinga yokuqala ukuthi qatha engqondweni yakhe: ayinoba ngomnye umntu ngaphandle kwelajoni, kunyanzelekile ibe lilo. Isikhalo asikhonyulukayo simenza azive engahlambulukanga. Azithuthuzele ngelithi abaphilayo ababekhe bahleka bayahleka kwakho.

Ucofa isibane esisetafileni, qha asicofe ngamandla, aqhubele indlu nzulu emgangathweni wayo—indawo etshoneleyo. Oko kukhanya kuncinci kukhoyo kuzoba amabala achokochoko phezu kolusu lwezandla zakhe. Wakhe wahamba elukhanyweni lwembali. Eligorhakazi. UMzalikazi weSizwe. Kodwa ekwanguye nomlutha, evingceleke kubomi beziyobisi oku kosana olungekazalwa lusesibelekweni sikanina. (Iwele, libhadlile liphinde lingabi nangqiqo kwalona). Wavela wazihlubula ngesaquphe, wayokuthi gqi nganyanga ithile ka Tshazimpunzi, efikela kwihlabathi limbi, uxindzelelo lweziyobisi sewaloyisa, engqungwe lihlabathi elikhazimla okwegolide. Ihlabathi elalingqinelana naye, livumelana neemvakalelo zobunyama zakhe, iqala ukwenzeka into enjalo kuyo yonke leminyaka wayezifihle okombungu ufukame kwihobo-hobo lenaliti. (Bawo Wethu Osezulwini, siyabulela). Kuphela enye imbali, kuqala enye.

Akhukho nto emhlabeni ingathozamisa abangakwaziyo ukugwetywa.

Uphakama atyhoboze ebumnyameni obukhefuzela ngasemnyango. Azihlalise phambi kwe piano. Ekuhlaleni kwakhe njalo, uva into eshukumayo ihamba phezu kolusu lwakhe okwamanzi. Ixesha elidlulileyo limxhagile, lizula-zula ecaleni kwakhe—owayekhe wangumlutha uyikuhlala engumlutha‐‐ubunzima obusindayo be piano bumxhasile ame akagungqi antywile. Uyadlala, umculo uthi wambu emoyeni, uwusinde. Akukho nto yodlula ukubamba. Uthembe kona nesiqu sakhe kuphela. Ulwazi oluthile.

NgeCawe (NgoMvulo?) efestileni. Uyakwazi ukuqikelela abone iintaba ezimnyama zisenyuka ngobumnyama obugqolileyo besibhaka-bhaka. Isibhaka-bhaka esizele amazwi (iintaka?). Ilanga alithembisi nto ngaphandle kobushushu obude nezibawu ezidengileyo emithini. Amafu akumila kungacacanga. Amagqabi emasangweni omzi. Usapho lweenyamazane luzinqothulela ingca ngokonqena. Ukukhanya okurhabaxa kumthi womoki okwebhandeji libophe inxeba. Umoya ugoba kwanto uyiphathayo. Intaka iphinda-phindana nesandi esinye. Izembe livakala ligawula ehlathini. Amaxhalanga edada ngokucotha kwimisinga yomoya obhityisiweyo. Umntu okanye into nganye eyedwa/iyodwa, ekhethekile/ikhethekile. Indalo inyathela kwkuhle, ngexesha. Isombela ngezingqi ezininzi. Ezemihlaba zingena msebenzi. Iyure yemini ingabalulekanga. Imozulu ingabalulekanga. Ubusika budlula emzimbeni weNtwasahlobo, buyokungena kwiHlobo, buphumele ku Kwindla. Imfazwe engapheliyo yezemvelo, yezinto ezingadibaniyo, ezinezimo eziphikisanayo. Emithini, amathupha atyhala ngaphaya kwexolo elivalekileyo, ukuvaleka ngci kwexesha lamandulo lifukanyelwe lixesha lanamhlanje. Iinkonjane zigcwele emithini zithath’ indawo yamagqabi abiwe bubusika, amahlahla edlamkile ziimpiko ezife mnyama.

Uzama ukutsalela onke amaqabaza omoya emiphungeni yakhe. Kukho into emonelisayo ngoku—ulonwabo oludikidiki olubuthathaka–uyazincumela. Uzoliswe yinto angasakwazi nakuyibiza ngagama. Ukungongoza okusentliziyweni yakhe, izikhukhula ezinyukayo zegazi lisophela ngaphandle. (Yasoloko iyenye indawo ehlala kuye ngaphakathi). Uqhwitha umcinga awosondeze kwiCohiba. Ilifwna elimhlophe lelinye icuba elimyoli. Umsi utyibilikisa isithunzi esijikeleza umlomo wakhe. Amazwi amnyama. Awaqingqe ewanambitha elwimni lakhe. Amazwi aqulathe konke esikwaziyo ngobu bomi singenantandabuzo. Ubulungisa. Inceba. Uxolelwano. Ubabalo. Uvelwano. Utyhalela umphefumlo ngaphandle, awuphefumlee ngaphakathi.

Ngokungathi zitsalwa ngumazibuthe, izithunzi zivumbuluka phantsi kwezinto, zingxamele ukuyokufika kuye. Ubumnyama budamile ngasezinyaweni zakhe. Ubumnyama bufikelela ngasemaqatheni akhe. Emadolweni. Esinqeni. Wonganyelwe bubumnyama. Ubusasaza ndawo yonke anyathela kuyo. Ubumnyama obusindayo bucothisa iinyawo zakhe. Izindlu zaqalisa ukudanyaza okwemicinga yomatahisi, ngomzuzwana laphe seliphelile iHlobo. Uthulula uthuthu kwicuba‐‐okuchithakeleyo kunenokwazi ukuqoleleleka—ebanga umsi ufufutheke uphanste ukuyokufikelela kufuphi nenyanga ngomgama onga ngeekota ezinthathu (xa uqikelela). Inyanga idyobha yonke into ngencindi engqindilili kokukhazimla kwayo. Ukukhanya kuphumla apho ngathi kubuyele ekhaya.

Iimvakalelo zogcobo olungathethekiyo. Ukothuka nokumangala. Iparadesi esemhlabeni. Iparadesi yomhlaba. Iparadesi esemhlabeni.