Botswana

You languish lethargically
Like a crocodile stuck deep
In the dark clay and cracking mud
Of drying rivers and empty dams.

Your rough and ridged back
Is the undulating terrain of rock,
As you lie rapt in reptilian slumber
Basking atop Stacken Hill
While you lie listlessly yawning
Sunning on sandy stretches
Between desert and town,
Parasitic birds feed from your teeth
Then fly out again to distant lands
Where rivers roll into lushness of lakes.

Your teeth are arrayed
Like ivory pillars of the Kgotla
Carved and splendidly sculptured
By the cultured hand of a craftsman
As totemlike you sprawl
On your stomach of slate

Your tough leathery hide
Is saddled with ribs of rock
That weigh you down as you crawl
Sluggishly towards Mapharangwane and Gaborone
Under the scorching sun

Molepolole, spread across the west
Like buffalo hide left dry,
Seldom you shine except
After the rains have rinsed you
Of the desert dust,
Then you gleam illusively like a python
Or a fat calloused woman smeared with Vaseline

O how I wish I could feel
The appraising touch of your scaly hands
How I long to rub against the quarry of your body
Like a stray cat against its master,
Until I find that tender flank
Along the pelvic haunches protecting your womb,
And there crouch, ensconced in the folds
Of your amphibian flesh, listening to the warmth
In the thawing of your blood.

The Mall
is an eye awakening
from the honey-heavy dew
of slumber that had settled
on its eyelashes:
the brilliant rays of the golden promises
skying the horizon.
The Mall
yawns ajar;
glassy-steel dentures open
beckon you to come-in-and-browse.
It is the tricky, sticky tongue of an adder
jetting out to catch the unsuspecting fly.
Telephones tinkling
tills clinking
with tikkie-box precision,
receiving cents sinking.
The Mall is the sound of lips:
kissing lovers, kissing brothers
pursing together into whispers of gossip;
office girls with telephone tone,
hissing in switchboard frequencies
It is the pouted lips of fat businessmen,
gaming on you to offer a smack on the cheek
before you turn the other…
It is the voice
of the Daily Newsense
our-one-and-only,
Radio Botswana the station of stagnation
The Shrill voice
Of that only man
standing by the Capitol Cinema
saying sooth, prophesying
to the wind, the birds
the hustle-bustle of city Gaborone
The Mall
is the scrawny hand
of that grandma,
cracked like the disused clay-pot
or parched terrain no longer able to
support grass,
begging for Pula.
She,
warm in her rug of poverty,
crouching against the stone-cold grey monument
leaning on memories of forgotten regiments
who fought foreign wars.
It is the nifty hand of the urchin:
Mahlalela dispossessed
picking pocket;
wealth repossessed
picking noses
pricking consciences…
The Mall is the neon twilight;
an electric eye blinking
on-off-on
watching you,
watching me,
watching…