Nothing's+Changed


 * [[file:nothings changed.ppt]]

Nothing’s Changed ** Small round hard stones click under my heels, seeding grasses-thrust bearded seeds into trouser cuffs, cans, trodden on, crunch in tall, purple-flowering, amiable weeds. District Six. No board says it is: but my feet know, and my hands, and the skin about my bones, and the soft labouring of my lungs, and the hot, white, inwards turning anger of my eyes. Brash with glass, name flaring like a flag, it squats in the grass and weeds, incipient Port Jackson trees: new, up-market, haute cuisine, guard at the gatepost, whites only inn. No sign says it is: but we know where we belong.

I press my nose to the clear panes, know, before I see them, there will be crushed ice white glass, linen falls, the single rose. Down the road, working man’s café sells bunny chows. Take it with you, eat it at a plastic table’s top, wipe your fingers on your jeans, spit a little on the floor: it’s in the bone. I back from the glass, boy again, leaving small mean O of small, mean mouth. Hand burn for a stone, a bomb, to shiver down the glass. Nothing’s changed.
 * // Tatamkhulu Afrika //**