Tercio de Muerte

Rethabile Masilo

In need of me dead and done in,
you nurtured me for years to get me here
and make me yours.

Your dress-like muleta
barely waves a call; you lead me home
in the end, and that is all.

Let us you and I dance to the finish
to the mood of this sunset in abundance,
for I will have no death in stages.

One blow should make this ours,
thorn thrust into flesh, cheers all around,
A coup de grâce to love for ages.

Many a-times I have envisioned
hail being torn apart by the flowers
it is falling upon.

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Passing

Rethabile Masilo

There isn’t any beating of the drums
After the long subsiding ray
When like a cruel master darkness comes.

Let the town criers hasten to convey
Outright this message to kingdoms.
Invite well-wishing folks to go away.

Let the menace rise as the heart succumbs
Deeper still, and let silence slay
You with meaning beyond the sound of psalms.

But if no-one will listen or obey,
Wind the clocks, swing the pendulums,
And let that message seal the stillborn day.

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Moments

Rethabile Masilo

To heroic hearts when disaster is there
comes a moment of conviction, at length,
to counter with a measure of its strength
the promise of dilemma in the air.

Having honoured the urge to put on earth
but for an instant, only to flit
farther with a push once again as it
rapidly collects itself going forth,

albeit with nothing specific to prove
as friendship conquers the foe, or like dawn
at the prospect of daylight coming on—

suddenly, out of little moments you’ve
crossed along the rugged road looms, one day,
the prospect of life in a quite new way.

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