A Wish to Eye God

Some years ago, when my wife and I were travelling in southern Africa, we had the chance to hear a reading in Swaziland by the South African writers, Nadine Gordimer and her longtime friend and fellow activist, Mongane Wally Serote. While Gordimer read her story "The Ultimate Safari", Serote followed with a number of his poems, including (if I remember it correctly) the anguished "A Wish to Eye God".

A Wish to Eye God

God,

May it happen that one day

When the sun wipes its face

and the moon shakes its sweat like a dog removing flies

I will no longer write about people

dying in the street and bleeding through the ears and eyes

and babies suffocating in suitcases in muddy dongas;

Lord,

I am not pleading or praying

I am just polite

choking my shout from rushing out

I am calm

Since that other day when I saw that mother shout at you

     at the grave

and I knew

even her dead silent scream won't help

and I was not wrong

for

Since I have been to the graveyard to lay down a stabbed

      boy.

God

You know that

I think

and think

think

about you and all they say about you

and what I see and hear and live

and

I have never had a life

but maybe I won't live for you

why

sorry

I feel like shouting.

Peter Adam Nash