Big smoke over the Mhlahahabatini District

Don't go down to the dump, my dears.
Never go near the dump.
One of these gruesome days, I fear
the lot will go up with a whump.

Mlabme kids
play down at the dump.
(Too many words at school.)
They fool around
in the mountains of junk
but words lurk here as well.

Newspapers, packets, labels from jars
indignant letters never sent
calamitous phone numbers, tragically wrong
graffitinous scribbles at night.
Angry words bubble in boiling mud pools.
Emotion's about to ignite.

Rubbing their pencils together
they laugh
in wanton, childish glee
frantically frotting their sticks
warming their hands at
a squiggle of heat.
Toying with fire
somebody finds a match.

It flares. It smokes.
A flame leaps out.
A kumara packet sparks.
The chips are smouldering steadily now
an ominous glow after dark.

Smoke envelops Mlabme town.
Those kids have been at it again.
The truants have fled
while authorities read
and words were measured in vain.

This is the way.
Yay! That's the way.
No, this is the way.
We burn. Franklin, awake on his mountain top
enthralled by the valley below.
Smoke at Mlabme again, he sees.
He digs something out of the snow.

Franklin disgorges his map of the sky
shimmering pockets of blue.
The wind scents them, welcomes them
breathing them out
unfurling the world as they go.

Verbal smoke will never cease.
The earth itself's on fire.
The sky's all black with burnt-out words
- so Franklin shakes it higher.

Every time I wash my sheets
My name is Nancy Browne
The urchins burn the words again
and nonsense tumbles down. As Nancy reads grim news indoors
the kids haul in her washing line.
Each one grabs a corner,
a paper-white sheet.
They dance in a crazy circle
faces upturned in ecstasy,
word-ashes lick their mouths.

Devilish dancing flicks the sheets.
Words bounce, collide, entwine, regroup.
As Nancy approaches, waving her stick
fallen words lie flat on the sheet
the sootiest glimmer of sense.

Truants never read too well
but they recognize junk
with a sensitive, dump-burnished nose.
Junk has a rotten-book smell,

"Ancient poems"
coughs Nancy Browne.
"Yuk. Let's burn it again."

Dennis List