At A Funeral
At A Funeral
At A Funeral
by Dennis Brutus
Imagined Worlds, pp. 59 – 62
(Transition and Revolution)
Dennis Brutus
• Born in Zimbabwe (then Rhodesia) in 1924.
• Taught in South Africa and became an anti-apartheid activist.
• Shot and imprisoned by apartheid regime and left South Africa
in in the 1960s.
• Lectured at UK and US universities.
• Passed away in 2009.
• For a time, Brutus was a banned person and his work was also
banned in apartheid South Africa.
Black, green and gold at sunset; pageantry 1
And stubbled graves Expectant, of eternity, 2
In bride’s-white, nun’s-white veils the nurses gush their bounty 3
Of red-wine cloaks, frothing the bugled dirging slopes 4
Salute! Then ponder all this hollow panoply 5
At a Funeral For one whose gift the mud devours, with our hopes. 6
(for Valencia
Majombozi, who
died shortly after
qualifying as a Oh all you frustrate ones, powers tombed in dirt, 7
doctor)
Aborted, not by Death but carrion books of birth 8
Arise! The brassy shout of Freedom stirs our earth: 9
Not Death but death’s-head tyrrany scythes our ground 10
And plots our narrow cells of pain defeat and dearth: 11
Better that we should die, than that we should lie down. 12
‘Black, green and gold
at sunset:’ (line 1)
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