A ROADGANG'S CRY by Oswald Mbuyiseni Mtshali

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Pneumatic drills

roar like guns in a battlefield 

as they tear the street.

Puffing machines swallow the red soil 

and spit it out like a tuberculotic's sputum.

Business-bent brokers hurry past; 

Women shoppers shamble tiredly, shooing their children 

Stragglers stop to stare 

as the ruddy-faced foreman watches men 

lifting a sewerage pipe into a trench.

It starts

as a murmur

from one mouth to another

in a rhythm of ribaldry 

that rises to a crescendo 

"Abelungu ngo'dam Basibiza ngo Jim- 

Whites are damned

they call us Jim,"