Songs of Anisha
“Jozi,”
by Sihle Mthembu
Jozi nights.
At the face of darkness
Your lights come up.
Joyful souls come out and play
In the clear darkness
2-step
2-step
Walking the streets of the city
Jozi for you
I turned my back on KwaZulu my home town.
I sought you for a softer pillow
To lie on in the night
Jozi
As the centuries walked by you
A hundred men
Have dug deep into your soul
Just to satisfy their lives’ worth
Only to leave holes in your beautiful heart
Jozi
As a young man
I drew a clear landscape of you in my mind
And hypnotized my thoughts with myths foretold
By my forefathers
We left our homelands packed up in a hundred trains
In search of gold.
Jozi you are a dream roaming the sleep
Of many men but the truth about you is never told
I saw a man dressed in black
With a white flower in hand. Standing
By the graveyards of a hundred men
In search of the bloodline where
His roots lie.
Jozi you are the unchanged beauty of an African portrait.
You offer simple shelter to a mother and child eating pap and vleis in
Sophiatown.
You harbour the ambitions of a town-man and his wife drinking soft wine
And watching your Mona Lisa smile.
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