Walk With Me by SIBONGUMUSA NCUBE
It used to be, in my grandmother’s time,
that a baby’s birth drew an audience
of aunts and cousins and sisters
gathered to watch new life emerge
And then when the baby grew,
he would learn to ask his
friends to never leave his side
“Ungikhaphe”, he would say
whenever his mother sent him to the river
My mother told me the tale
of the day she married my father
and how the whole village showed up to give her
away And like all the generations of women before
her,
she did not start the journey alone
“Ungikhaphe”, she said to her
sister
And the two went together
And one day I will tell the story
Of all the times when I broke the village creed
And journeyed in the solitude and loneliness
To whoever asks me, I will defend myself
And say I was never alone
I knelt to the ancestors and said to them
“Ungikhaphe”, and so they didSIBONGUMUSA NCUBE was a transfer student from Zimbabwe.