They will not tell you your suffering is white. They will not say it is just as well. They will not compete for ashes of infants. We will stroke your flat, empty belly, let you weep with us in the dark, and arm you with one of our babies to carry home on your back. The wind is back.
Window panes rattle old rust, summer rising.
Street children, shaven mummies in sacks, eyelids weighted by dreams of coins, beneath them treasure of small knives. Flower sellers add fresh blossoms to yesterday's blooms, sour buckets filled and spilling. And trucks digest the city's sediment men gloved and silent in the municipal jaws. A marshland of fog and gas muffles the commerce of sound, turns Cape Town into Venice as the light on the dock laps tackle, cranes, yards, grain elevators, suspending them in tidal anchorage. Shimmering like a promise, the yellow mirage prepares sailors for the city, its irradiated bowl.