O Mzingeli son of the illustrious clans
You whose beauty spreads across the Tukela estuary
Your memory haunts like two eagles
We have come to the ceremonial ruins
We come to mourn the bleeding sun
We are the children of Ndungunya of the Dlamini clan
They whose grief strikes fear over the earth
We carry the long mirrors in the afternoon
Recasting time’s play past infinite night.
O great departed ancestors
You promised us immortal life with immortal joys
But how you deceived us!
We invited the ugly salamander
To keep watch over a thousand years with a thousand sorrows
She watched to the far end of the sky
Sometimes terrorized by the feet of departed men
One day the furious storms
One day from the dark cyclone
One day in the afternoon
We gazed into a barren desert
Listening to the tremendous voices in the horizon
And loved again in the epics
And loved incestuous love!
We count a million
Strewn in the dust of ruined capitals
The bull tramples us on an anthill
We are late in our birth
Accumulating violent voices
Made from the lion’s death
You whose love comes from the stars
Have mercy on us!
Give us the crown of thunder
That our grief may overhang the earth
O we are naked at the great streams
Wanderers greet us no more…