Soweto — Sylvester C. I. Onyeji

The hearths have begun to glow anew
While the new warriors have gathered all the
Abandoned broken-spears and have begun to mend them
Their eyes have become sore and red with smoke
While their mouths are overblown
With blowing the glowing fire on the hearth

Reality is today basking under the sun
More than ever before
And hawky-eyes of new consciousness
Have developed in their midst
Amidst-the-lifting-mist-of-dawn

The broken-spears of yesterday have begun to shine
Casting light on a glorious past which
Had slept since after a bloody meeting
In the cross-fire of power

The slow-cadence of distant-drums
Beating from their ancestral-dead
Have transmuted and have-begun to beat
In wild-thundering-rubble, rousing sleepy-heads
Into wild-defiance

We lift up our heads now and again
To find wild-and-innocent flowers who stir
The thick-black-blood of Chaka’s progeny

Now we find hands that point in new directions
Starry-eyes that look with brazen-speculation
And heavy-feet that lift and drop
Like the march of the African elephant.