Rough Music

The night’s very restless inyanga is already by the pier,
eyes shut, pacing
and murmuring the 11th commandment of a new faith.
The beer-stained guards have exhausted their shift
umpiring since dawn the eternal struggle
between mynahs and crows by the rubbish bins.
The fishermen, past their third bottle of cane
dream of grunters, reek of shad
and complain that no ship was hooked
even though they cast their lines far in the far gardens of foam.
And there: the sea’s eyelid full of fins
the factory sirens quiet at last
the hooligan moon peers over the Bluff
and the horses of the deep get restless.