Song for Ilva Mackay and Mongane by Keorapetse Kgositsile,

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Hear now a sound of floods

Of desire of longing of memories

Of erstwhile peasants who can

No longer laugh downhill. My brother

Knows there is no death in life

Only in death. That music is native

So I sing your name.

You are child of your tongue

You will be born with gun

In one eye and grenade in the other

You are Tito: There is no such thing

As escape or sanctuary in life where

All things come to pass when they do

Where every bloodstain is a sign of death or life

You are Mandela: You are all

The names we are in Robben Island

You are child of sound and sense

You can look the past

Straight in the eye

To know this season and purpose

You have come from yesterday

To remind the living that

The dead do not remember the banned

The jailed the exiled the dead

Here I meet you

And this way I salute you

With bloodstains on my tongue:

I am no calypsonian

But this you have taught me:

You could say you were from Capetown

Or Johannesburg Accra or Bagamoy

Newyork Kingston or Havana

When you have come from tomorrow

We shall know each other by our bloodstains