I WROTE A POEM

So this is entirely silly, quite sentimental and disgustingly trite but I have nine days left in the States, I am soon to return to South Africa (which I miss like the blazes) and, like probably every homesick Saffer before me, I really, deeply and truly want a good braai. So I wrote a poem. As you do. Right?

With apologies to every real poet (ever) and all the language teachers I know ... Please try not to make gagging noises. Snorting beer out your nose is acceptable.

Ode on a Jozi braai

I sing tonight for that most sweet of meals,

to sate the yearning of my Saffer tongue

and calm the beating of this heart that feels

adrift in foreign lands so farly flung.

Oh give to me the scent of charring meat

and quench my thirst with ice-cold Zamalek!

With every cell my displaced soul does cry

for egte kos to eat.

It may be callous but, oh, what the heck:

my life would be complete had I a braai!

I long to phuza with my splendid friends

and watch the hot sun dip below the smog

as fire the burnt off’ring heaven-wards sends.

For heaven is wors cooked on flaming log

and strange salads that no-one ever eats.

Perhaps a slender branch to which I cling:

this masticating of my homesick jaw;

but in the country for which my heart beats

it’s just another thing

that makes me say today Mzansi fo’sho!

[There were going to be more stanzas, including a line about the dulcet sounds of police sirens, but I decided to spare you the pain and get back to the real work I'm supposed to be doing.]