THE MOULTING COUNTRY BIRD by Oswald Mbuyiseni Mtshali

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I wish

I was not a bird

red and tender of body 

with the mark of the tribe 

branded on me as a fledgling 

hatched in the Zulu grass hut.

Pierced in the lobe of the ear 

by the burning spike of the elderman; 

he drew my blood like a butcher bird 

that impales the grasshopper on the thorn.

As a full fledged starling

hopping in the city street, 

scratching the building corridor, 

I want to moult 

from the dung-smeared down 

tattered like a fieldworker's shirt, 

tighter than the skin of a snake 

that sleeps as the plough turns the sod.

Boots caked with mud,

wooden stoppers flapping from earlobes 

and a beaded little gourd dangling on a hirsute chest, 

all to stoke the incinerator.

I want to be adorned

by a silken suit so scintillating in sheen, 

it pales even the peacock's plumage,

and catches the enchanted eye 

of a harlot hiding in an alley:

'Come! my moulten bird, 

I will not charge you a price!