Rice: Poems

South Africa: When a Woman Is a Rock

109 South Africa: When a Woman Is a Rock They always put their hands on the women first They do this for a living They do it to make a point Cutting away the heart Leaves a hole Big enough for bullets to crawl through The children are prepared for school While the ground is prepared for the children In mourning circles the women gather They think of a number between one and ten Then guess aloud Then pray they are wrong Whose name goes here The shoveling dirt asks Whose tiny back fits This bloody ground Which infant heart is next They strike the gentle angry women first And when they do They do not know They are touching rock Lillian Ngoyi Albertina Sisulu Florence Matomela Are there Raising the hands the heads 110 Of the twenty million Who wear coffin lines Like bracelets On their shoulders Yea Swazi Yea Xhosa Yea Venda Yea Zulu All our rivers are red And your stomping skips Like a pebble across the Atlantic It is family here that knows They have more than touched The gentle angry women On the front lines Where our children are illegal Our men banished Where land offered is no homeland And boulders born from pebbles Fall instead Francina Baard Mary Moodley Winnie Mandela Ain’t no running to the rock To hide your face Cause rocks will cry out No hiding place Yea Swazi Yea Xhosa Yea Venda Yea Zulu 111 The gentlest The angriest The women Live beyond sea level “A nation is not conquered until the hearts of its women are on the ground.”* *Native American proverb ...