Handcuffs

Handcuffs

Handcuffs

Handcuffs

Have steel fangs

Whose bite is more painful

Than a whole battilion

Of fleas

Though the itch in my heart

Grows deeper and deeper

I cannot scratch.

How can I?

My wrists are manacled.

My mind

Is caged

My soul is shackled.

I can only grimace at the etheral cloud,

‘Have hope, brother,

despair is for the defeated.’

(Oswald Mtshali
– from South African Freedom Poems; Heinemann, 1980)