THE MOULTING COUNTRY BIRD by Oswald Mbuyiseni Mtshali
I wish
I was not a bird
red and tender of body
with the mark of the tribe
branded on me as a fledgling
hatched in the Zulu grass hut.
Pierced in the lobe of the ear
by the burning spike of the elderman;
he drew my blood like a butcher bird
that impales the grasshopper on the thorn.
As a full fledged starling
hopping in the city street,
scratching the building corridor,
I want to moult
from the dung-smeared down
tattered like a fieldworker's shirt,
tighter than the skin of a snake
that sleeps as the plough turns the sod.
Boots caked with mud,
wooden stoppers flapping from earlobes
and a beaded little gourd dangling on a hirsute chest,
all to stoke the incinerator.
I want to be adorned
by a silken suit so scintillating in sheen,
it pales even the peacock's plumage,
and catches the enchanted eye
of a harlot hiding in an alley:
'Come! my moulten bird,
I will not charge you a price!
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