Deborah Seddon
“Thin Line” / “I Know You Are Reading This Poem” / “Reggae for Bob”
Thin Line
I Know You Are Reading This Poem
(after Adrienne Rich, “Dedications”)
I know you are reading this poem lying flat on the couch by the window,
aware of the little lizards stalking each other and leaping about on the wall outside.
I know you are reading this poem smoking in the bath on a Saturday morning,
as the warm air, the words, the smoke, and your nakedness, mingle and mellow in the steam.
I know you are reading this poem in the sun on the stoep of an old Karoo house
in the winter, having driven so far to escape your own life and yet facing it here on the page.
I know you are reading this poem on the computer in your office instead of working
because you need something else today to help you chart a way through.
I know you are reading this poem on the small screen of your phone in the middle
of the night, shaken by a dream in which you embraced your lost lover.
I know you are reading this poem among strangers on a train as you rattle
towards an unfamiliar city you are learning to loathe.
I know you are reading this poem on the windowsill of a hotel room in summer
as the women on the roofs nearby hang washing and laugh with each other.
I know you are reading this poem under your breath and over and over,
as you sit on the carpet between bookshelves in a chain-store,
because you need to remember you who you are, and you can’t afford the book.
I know you are reading this poem in a language not your own
but one you write in, often dream in, and also sometimes make love.
I know you are reading this poem at a table in the public library,
because you are lonely and homesick for your own country, to which you may never return.
I know you are reading this poem because you don’t know anyone else who feels like
this and yet here are the echoes of your own private yearnings.
I know you are reading this poem because you need it near you always,
a strand in the rope that drew you, hand over hand, out of the well.
Reggae for Bob
(After Linton Kwesi Johnson)
(For Gillian Makura, 1971-2015)
We’re five little girls. We’re just sixteen.
And all the world seems Eden green.
With no shoes, no boys, no rash temptation,
We carry Bob Marley, his songs of redemption.
They swing from one hand on the radio-tape deck.
As we walk through the grass on a Saturday picnic.
Harare City. Botanical Garden.
And all the world seems green and Eden.
When the rain comes falling, it shines in the sun.
When the rain comes falling, it doesn’t stop our fun.
When the rain comes falling, we aren’t worried getting wet.
When the rain comes falling, we do not feel upset.
It falls soft, like pollen, like tiny golden leaves.
It falls soft, like pollen, like blessing or reprieve.
Only now, my youth long gone.
I think of that day as formation.
Bob Marley and the girls and the golden rain.
It needs a mention.
It needs attention.
For it’s part of my brain.
It’s part of my brain.
And I want to live the same.
So I’m going to live the same.
Five little black and white girls. We’re from Harare.
Our hometown now gone wrong and scary.
We’re far from home. We see little good.
And I think of that day from our childhood.
Harare. 1988.
The adults. They’re still holding hate.
But in the eighties, when we were lighties.
We had the wise poet’s words.
We had the warm pollen rain.
And we felt it the same.
We felt it the same.
So Bob Marley and the girls and the golden rain.
It needs a mention.
It needs attention.
For it’s part of our brain.
It’s part of our brain.
And we want to live the same.
So we’re going to live the same.
When the rain comes falling, it shines in the sun.
When the rain comes falling, it doesn’t stop our fun.
When the rain comes falling, we aren’t worried getting wet.
When the rain comes falling, we do not feel upset.
It falls soft, like pollen, like tiny golden leaves.
It falls soft, like pollen. Like blessing. Like reprieve.
Deborah Seddon is a queer Zimbabwean poet and an academic, living and working in South Africa, teaching literary studies in English, mostly poetry. She came out late in life, after leaving and divorcing her husband. Since then, she has been determined to write more poems that are visibly queer. There is not enough queer writing by women in Africa. Compared to the United States, there is hardly any at all. She has also recently begun to write more about her parents and the complexity of having grown up in Zimbabwe, following the death of her mother in Harare.