From: hornpete@uctvax.uct.ac.za (Peter Horn)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.poems
Subject: Horn: Ballad of the Security Forces
Date: 30 Jul 92 10:56:21 GMT
Article-I.D.: uctvax.1992Jul30.085621.202156
Organization: University of Cape Town

The Ballad of the Security Forces
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Jorobados y nocturnos,
por donde animan ordenan
silencios de goma oscura
y miedos de fina arena.

Hunchbacked and nocturnal,
where they move they evoke
silences of dark rubber
and dread fears of fine sand.

 Frederico Garcma Lorca, Romance de la Guardia Civil Espaqola

Red, orange red are their mouths,
dripping with orange-juice
and the blood of steaks,
glowing red like the neon lips of the night,
in their chalk-white faces,
their faces of blotched fear,
as they walk amongst the shanties
of the fists of defiance,
amid silences of dark rubber,
they carry at the ready in their fists,
blue, steel-blue the barrels of their guns.
Hidden in their cabbages,
stewed in fat and indifference
is a slimy death: knives
rip up empty stomachs.
A wild mangy cat jumps and bites,
hungry dogs snarl on their leashes.

Oh the marches under a red flag
and under the banners of black, green and gold!
The taste of sweet melons and the sun
burning headaches into my eyes,
the exuberance and the tears,
and the drink of clear mountain water.
Oh to step again on the beaches
amongst the gentle breakers
surrounded by a flight of derisory howls!
And the step, the hammering step,
the sweating uniforms and the shots:
there was always death,
explosions of stone, dynamite, joy,
and rotating overhead in blue and yellow,
carrying dogs with shredding teeth
and mindless human machines:
Their heads are bare skulls of red sand stone
their bodies are death in hyena skins
hiding their souls of cold silver.

Beds drift idly through the streets,
the sea sand crawls over human faces,
as the horizon peeps between its eyelashes,
two evil stars fell through the same night
blinding its eyes: Do you not see the wound
in my back between my ribs? I come bleeding
from the streets of Mitchell's Plain.
I will not die decently in my bed
in the sheets of my mother's white linen.

In this land of eyeless death
it was a black spring
when they gouged out the corals
of shining green birds
who knew of blood and of anguish,
who sang of broken bones and shattered ribs,
who were not silent about death in the street.
The corpses had my brother's face of brown marble
as they lay on the street
with a bullet in their head, a trail of blood,
and they were known to everyone
bubbling rosy foam between their lips
the lonely corpses of the night
among eyeless concrete walls with election posters:
You cannot fight the crocodile in the river.

Strange stars stare down on the earth,
convulsed by subterranean tremors,
owls were screaming throughout the night.
I carry a word between my teeth
a word to be chewed over and over again,
in this procession of tempests,
this mortal existence of roseate flesh
and the delicate scattered violets.

And on the roof the cloud hand,
the gliding wet shadow hand,
throwing water against the window,
as we went weeping and swearing
through the mist on the mountains:
I drink the wind of a night time,
while the drunken policemen
are knocking on my door
with axes and shotguns.
There are people who whisper under their breaths:
that man is dead, he doesn't know it,
but he is dead. His heart is dynamite.

Boundless time is in the garden,
it bows down all foreheads to the ground,
oblivion is shedding its leaves,
the trees rain down in silence,
the scythe stained in blood.
I hear the weeping in cruel brightness
while I threaded intransitive verbs on strings:
gently it rains in the river,
it rains so tenderly,
it rains and there is no malice in the rain.

Peter Horn
 
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Peter Horn 
German Department, UCT 
43 Trevor Road, Lansdowne 7764, Cape, Republic of  South Africa . 
Phone Home ZA-(021)696-1983		e-Mail: HORNPETE@UCTVAX.UCT.AC.ZA 
      Work ZA-(021)650-2936		Fax ZA-(021) 650-3726 
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Peter Horn, Walking through our sleep (Poems), Ravan Press 1974
Peter Horn, Poems 1964-1989, Ravan Press 1991
Peter Horn, An Axe in the Ice (Poems), COSAW Publishing House 
forthcoming September/October 1992
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Ravan Press, P.O.Box 31134, Braamfontein 2017, Republic of South Africa
COSAW Publishing House, P.O.Box 421007, Fordsburg 2033, Republic of 
South Africa.
USA: Ohio University Press Fax (614) 593-4536
Britain: Central Books, Fax (71) 378-1811
Australia: New Era Books, Fax (02) 596-0045
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