POETRY PACK 2024

ENGLISH HOME LANGUAGE

GRADE 09
 TERM 1 POETRY
I feel a poem
By Don Mattera
Thumping deep, deep
I feel a poem inside
wriggling within the membrane
of my soul;

tiny fists beating,

beating against my being
trying to break the navel cord,
crying, crying out
to be born on paper
Thumping
deep, so deeply
I feel a poem,
inside

The Song Maker

Kingsley Fairbridge

Alone in the hot sun,

On the hot sand in the sun,
Alone at the edge of the kraal,
In the dust of the dance-ground
Near the raised tobacco patch; —
The women have gone to the fields,
The children have gone to play,
And the blind Maker of Songs
Sits here, alone, all day.

The dogs sniff'd him and went.

The kraal-rats peer and go,
So very still he sits
Day long, and moon to moon,
His hands slack on the sand; —
And he was just the same,
This maker of tribal songs,
Before the White Men came.

His was the song that woke

The war that brought their power;
The impi went with song —
Came back with song by night,
So many years ago,
With plunder every one;
Leaving among the dead,
Ganero, his only son.

And here, all day, he sits,

On the hot sand in the sun;
The children wonder if he sleeps,
And the flies think him dead,
The dogs smell him and go; —
But to him is bare the lore
Of the Threshing and the Dancing Songs,
And the Chant that leads to War.
 TERM 2 POETRY
IF
By Rudyard Kipling

If you can keep your head when all about you

Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;

If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings

And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,

 Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!
Love Poem for My Country
By Sandile Dikeni

My country is for love

so say its valleys
where ancient rivers flow
the full circle of life
under the proud eye of birds
adorning the sky.
My country is for peace
so says the veld
where reptiles caress
its surface
with elegant motions
glittering in their pride
My country
is for joy
so talk the mountains
with baboons
hopping from boulder to boulder
in the majestic delight
of cliffs and peaks
My country
is for health and wealth
see the blue of the sea
and beneath
the jewels of fish
deep under the bowels of soil
hear
the golden voice
of a miner’s praise
for my country
My country
is for unity
feel the millions
see their passion
their hands are joined together
there is hope in their eyes
we shall celebrate
 TERM 3 POETRY
Grandpa
By Paul Chidyausiku
They say they are healthier than me
Though they can’t walk to the end of a mile
At their age I walked forty at night
To wage a battle at dawn.

They think they are healthier than me:

If their socks get wet they catch a cold;
When my sockless feet got wet, I never sneezed –
But they still think they are healthier than me.

On a soft mattress over a spring bed,

They still have to take a sleeping-pill;
But I, with reeds cutting into my ribs,
My head resting on a piece of wood,
I sleep like a babe and snore.

They blow their noses and pocket the stuff –

That’s hygienic so they tell me;
I blow my nose into the fire,
But they say that is barbaric.
 If a dear one dies I weep without shame;
If someone jokes, I laugh with all my heart.

They stifle a tear as if to cry was something wrong.

But they also stifle a laugh,
As if to laugh was something wrong too.
No wonder they need psychiatrists!

When I have more than one wife

They tell me that hell is my destination,
But when they have one and countless mistresses,
They pride themselves on cheating the world!

No, let them learn to be honest with themselves first

Before they persuade me to change my ways,
Says my grandfather, the proud old man.

Snow-flakes
By Henry Longfellow
Out of the bosom of the Air,
Out of the cloud-folds of her garments shaken,
Over the woodlands brown and bare,
Over the harvest-fields forsaken,
Silent, and soft, and slow
Descends the snow.
Even as our cloudy fancies take
Suddenly shape in some divine expression,
Even as the troubled heart doth make
In the white countenance confession,
The troubled sky reveals
The grief it feels.

This is the poem of the air,

Slowly in silent syllables recorded;
This is the secret of despair,
Long in its cloudy bosom hoarded,
Now whispered and revealed
To wood and field.

TERM 4 POETRY
Kwela Man
By Johnny Clegg

Long ago there was a sound in the night

Kwela man, singing under the street light
A cheap guitar, he gave his sorrow a smile
And he sowed his songs in the alley ways mile upon mile

Ye hum ho la lo Kwela man

Ye hum ho la la Kwela, Kwela
Ye hum ho la lo Kwela man
You gave it your life

Ye hum ho la lo Kwela man

Ye hum ho la la Kwela, Kwela
Ye hum ho la lo Kwela man
You gave it your life

Living low with the Pennywhistle, tea-chest base gang

I followed him home and he danced as he sang
But now he's gone, not even the slightest traces
Of a Kwela song and the street is full of empty spaces

Ye hum ho la lo Kwela man

Ye hum ho la la Kwela, Kwela
Ye hum ho la lo Kwela man
You gave it your life

Ye hum ho la lo Kwela man

Ye hum ho la la Kwela, Kwela
Ye hum ho la lo Kwela man
You gave it your life

Nobody knows, did he survive the winding road?

Did he find a song that took him back to the heartland?
Here I stand, lost in the memory
Of a Kwela man, singing in the long gone twilight

When I followed you home Kwela man

You filled my soul, Kwela, Kwela
When you sang your song Kwela man
You gave it your life

Ye hum ho la lo Kwela man

Ye hum ho la la Kwela, Kwela
Ye hum ho la lo Kwela man
You gave it your life

Ye hum ho la lo Kwela man

Ye hum ho la la Kwela, Kwela
Ye hum ho la lo Kwela man
You gave it your life

Ye hum ho la lo Kwela man

Ye hum ho la la Kwela, Kwela
Ye hum ho la lo Kwela man
You gave it your life

Ye hum ho la lo Kwela man

Ye hum ho la la Kwela, Kwela
Ye hum ho la lo Kwela man
You gave it your life

Ye hum ho la lo Kwela man

Ye hum ho la la Kwela, Kwela
Ye hum ho la lo Kwela man
The Birth of Shaka by
By Oswald Mtshali

His baby cry

was of a cub
tearing the neck
of the lioness
because he was fatherless.

The gods
boiled his blood
in a clay pot of passion
to course in his veins.

His heart was shaped into an ox shield

to foil every foe.
Ancestors forged
his muscles into
thongs as tough
as water bark
and nerves
as sharp as
syringa thorns.

His eyes were lanterns

that shone from the dark valleys of Zululand
to see white swallows
coming across the sea.
His cry to two assassin brothers:

"Lo! you can kill me

but you'll never rule this land!"