Poetry ...

I wrote this in memory of all of my friends who died fighting for our freedom, but especially for the best and dearest friend that I have ever had .... Sipho, who was killed less that one year before we had our first ever free elections in South Africa.
 

Requiem for a Hero

Noble comrade warrior,
With twisted limbs athwart your breached body,
Down deep into the dark Afric' earth
Your lifesblood slowly trickles.
Your heroic soul rises
From that cruelly shattered form,
Which once we knew ~and loved ~ as you,
To be gathered to your forebears,
There to gladly stand amidst the thronging heroes
Who so proudly died before.

But though your cold brow shall never know
a loving mother's smoothing touch,
Nor misted fathers eye your final resting place behold,
Yet we believe that you
~ and those that died with you ~
Still walk your birthright land,
And have at last received,
From the warm, compassionate heart of Mother Africa,
Eternal Freedom.

And we, who now can walk our treasured land freed of oppressive yoke

~ free because you died ~

Hear, in parents' easy laughter and schoolchild's merry song,
A faint, far-off paean of joyous liberty.
We hear long-dead voices in the droning of the bees.
In the wind, a ceaseless, ghostly singing,
As from unchained souls.

Within our hearts
You will not die.

Shane William Wilson.
Johannesburg, 1995.