A ROADGANG'S CRY by Oswald Mbuyiseni Mtshali
Pneumatic drills
roar like guns in a battlefield
as they tear the street.
Puffing machines swallow the red soil
and spit it out like a tuberculotic's sputum.
Business-bent brokers hurry past;
Women shoppers shamble tiredly, shooing their children
Stragglers stop to stare
as the ruddy-faced foreman watches men
lifting a sewerage pipe into a trench.
It starts
as a murmur
from one mouth to another
in a rhythm of ribaldry
that rises to a crescendo
"Abelungu ngo'dam Basibiza ngo Jim-
Whites are damned
they call us Jim,"
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