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Writer's pictureA Too Powerful Word

Mabule Zachariah Rapola


Mabule Zachariah Rapola is a Johannesburg-based author, television writer and filmmaker. Creative mentors include the late Ntate Eskia Mphahlele, Nadine Gordimer and Lionel Abrahams. He studied filmmaking in South Africa, France and Denmark, and has produced and directed documetaries and shorts in above counties. He participated in the National Film and Video Foundation’s Sediba Masters Programme in Screenwriting. Television series include Mponeng, (SABC2 Comedy Series). Matatiele (ETV), Ihawu (SABC1), Hola! Mpinji, (a drama series based on characters from the Stanza novels currently airing on SABC-TV2).

He has done stints as a freelance journalist for national publications like Sowetan, City Press, Mail & Guardian and Tribute Magazine. time Tribute Magazine poetry competition finalist, A two-time finalist in a national poetry competition, his poetry and fiction has appeared South African, American and Danish literary journals and anthologies. A fellow of the Iowa International Writing Program, and most recently, Noma Award winner for the short story collection, Beginnings of a Dream, (Jacana, 2007)

Other publications include the novel series for young adults: Stanza on the edge, Stanza and the jive mission, Stanza’s Soccer World Cup, (Maskew Miller Longman, 2001, 2005, and 2009). Is co-editor, with Professor Isabel Balseiro of the upcoming African Travel Anthology, “The Passport That Does Not Pass Ports: African Literature of Travel in the Twenty-First Century.” from Michigan State University Press, (2020).



DIALOGUE WITH THE SUN


tears that I shed come

less saturated in chlorine traces

in between my pores fleeing sweat

pays homage to old age

we are born when we like

and shuffle shades around

for better dialogue with the sun

the season of living is tedious

where sun rises and sun sets are

monotonous syllables



DREAMERS

dreamers have come & gone

long before the dawn of capital

long before the tide of servitude

dreamers have come & gone

peasant dreamers of long & fugitive

dreams

i have shared in their longings

when nightmares rattled their wondering thoughts

peasant dreamers of long & fugitive dreams

dreamers have come & gone

a comrade

nourished on patriotism

i have witnessed their

century old journey

dreamers have come & gone

I have cried & longed too

when they dream of oceans & winds

for i too am a dreamer

a dreamer

of long & fugitive dreams


 Inspired by Langston Hughes’s ‘‘The Negro Speaks of Rivers’




DELILAH’S MASCARA

Your face is a canvass

I defined my existence on,

you gathered two sun rays

to revive my nauseated emotions

led me to a fish-tank

bowl of servitude

set my weary fingers to

modeling murals and graffiti,

indebted to you

I spent my youth days

scrabbling murals and lime

to make pathways for ants.

You filtered my stained blood

to purity my dreams,

set Azaria from her shackles

fragile and unsteady

she emerges a thousand

years later as Azania

Oh! Azaria Azania

can your tears moisten

this barren land,

or clouds borrow our smoke

to shade their sun-burns?

Years after you’re gone

stalactites of your laughter

still hang in my ears.






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