“It came to be buried” + “a land in common” by Buhle Ndhlovu

It came to be buried,
It came to be reclaimed

After manifold wanderings
Thousand fruitful toils
On thousand tireless legs

In the silence of the earth
Amidst the cadence of birdsong
And the flutter of winged creatures

It came to be buried,
It came to be reclaimed

Under the cool, gentle breeze of a deathless wind
Journeyed afar with tales of restless others, being and dying

Under the watchful gaze of eternal sunlight
In the company of music of enduring delight

In the crook of a small jagged outcropping
Shaded and dignified,
Filled with the comfort of eased wanderings

Still living?
Or maybe still dying

What does it mean to move from living to dying?
Other than to move from the world that seeks nourishment
To the world that gives nourishment

Perhaps this is the real meaning of living and dying
Of dying and rebirth:
To migrate from the world that seeks nourishment
To the world that gives nourishment

a land in common

You can see that these people have a land in common
a land
a tongue
a tempo

I figured that out when my grandfather died
he passed on Thursday
and by Friday
in the early morning
before the sun rose
mom was off to the airport
first stop Joburg, then Bulawayo
to bury a man neither of us had seen in fifteen years

Their relationship had been somewhat tense
fraught with negative space
all those lingering and unspoken things

I think to bury him
would be the overflow
the undamming
the loosing
the release

On the day she returned, I was home
I asked her as many questions as I could
about as much as I could
about all that I could
about all I knew to ask

When the questions were done,
I left
to make tea
to mask the yards of silence between us
and the undone leagues of labour
undone leagues of loving

When my cousin came home
Ma was in the kitchen, and suddenly
the texture of time changed
it stretched, it slowed
it halted, it breathed
it bent, and bowed
and it held

In a language my tongue is too heavy to form,
they spoke of a place they both know
a place they had both seen
both grown up in
and people they knew in common

About the land
and its rain
and its rolling fields of green
They spoke of how the people,
come to lay him to rest
spilled out of the yard
into the fields
and over yonder

So full was it,
that though they arrived under cover of darkness
there were already scores and droves,
come to pay their respects

And in that land they have in common
the land to which they belong
whose rhythm they know well
whose tempo they trust
in that land they laid him to rest

Buhle Ndhlovu is a Zimbabwean-born Namibian writer, who lives and writes in Windhoek.