Depleted Mine by Lilian Dube

Living these lives, we let this wind

Do what it knows best

This dry African breeze

Blowing through our souls

Fanning the dying flames within

We mourn what we desire

But never will have-

We sit within this earthen cavity

Of an ageing mine

The prospectors have

Wept their farewell & gone

We know nothing-

But how to conjure flecks

Of gold in the thick air

Building upon swampy odor

Illusions of a future

Forgeries of the past…

Murmuring to our selves

We form on this mine’s dust,

With our chapped fingers,

Stars as those adorning

Our Eternally Sunless sky

 Dazzling as the yonder

Glorious kingdoms, whose songs

We hear enviously, at night

From a gaping distance, haunting…

The sun rises on the pure

& bloodstained alike

How pure is funeral song?

How red is Ceaser’s throne?

Be it crimson

in the reign of the deranged?

These rotting pillars of the continent!

Baobabs, trunks

That glimmer silver at night

 Yet pulps fermenting

trees hollow inside…

Our backs have been forever

Bent, weighed down

&so we sit here, our hearts

Hung on naked branches

To be numbed by a winter’s

Cold , wet wind-

Yet dreams shall last forever

&evermore: Of all the

Tarnished silver

& of all the gone gold.