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    Cape Town

     

    by Rethabile Masilo

     

     

    - for Rustum Kozain

     

    A seal at the beach sniffs tins,

    lifts them with his snout. & ever

    this Manenberg jazz

    behind each gesture,

    rising & falling to waves the sea makes,

    from here to a clothesline near the sky's end;

    across the sun a flock of birds moves

    like shirts hung out to dry.

    But, here, moves this seal

    drawn from tin to tin by the smell of sardines.

    He brays at a passing child

    & claps his hands to shoo her away

    before moving on, his snout touching the blue

    surface like a metal detector seeking treasure.

    No females have come this way lately

    to give birth, or in these shallow parts

    to mate, where the Indian & Atlantic oceans meet,

    here against rock blanched by fungus

    that comes when the water warms up—

    his shadow searches each hole

    for shells still with flesh in them,

    which, once exposed, disappears down his gullet

    in a gasp. Magic time when that happens,

    or when small fish are trapped as water withdraws

    to meet its origin toward the ends of the earth.

    Night falls fast, & the seal moves from the beach

    to a group of rocks, disappears into the night

    as Tshona from a docked iPod begins to play.

    But tonight, like the baby bull glistening with kelp,

    I go my way—& not even Abdullah Ibrahim

    could hold me back today.

     

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