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)