Cardiff International Poetry Competition

Runner-up - John Leslie Brooke 

John Brooke is an Anglo-Scot born and raised in Birmingham who has lived and worked in several overseas countries, including Botswana where his poem Tswana is set. He now lives on the banks of the Severn but continues to travel. He has had a number of poems and short stories published in Welsh and English literary journals and has recently completed his first novel.
 

Tswana

Pula! Raingreeting! I saw you from afar,
Tall, like the blue hill line you walked from,
Cool, as this thorn shade where we meet.
Dumela rra! Dumela! Welcome, twice welcome!

We have journeyed long, each tired of his own shadow,
Hungry for speech that is not our sered tongue's rustling;
Our delight in meeting shines in our eyes, dark stars
That cluster like bees in this dusk of thorn;
The sound of our own language pouring sweet
Upon ears dry with the drought of silence,
We sink words in great draughts, as cattle drink.

Lotsile jang? How did you journey; was the going hard?
And so the serious talk begins:
We talk of rains, of their coming and not coming,
Of rain and the growing of grass and the milk rush,
Of rain and cattle and the wild hay,
Of who thrives and who dies, and where it rains in the lands.

Lotswa kae? From where did you journey?
What clans are there, what are their natures and doings?
So we are moved to talk of places, and of the people in them,
As was always meant from that first far seeing,
And this is the sweetest talk, the nearest to the bone.

And I offer dried meat from the spine of an ox
And you bread from an earth oven,
And there is water enough, each to his own,
And I tell of how the ox grew old in ploughing
And you of how the mealies were grown that made the bread,
And I of him, my strong son, who killed the ox with his axe
And you of her, your young wife, whose bread is good.

Then the outer silence falls pleasantly
And the inner voices begin to call
And the urge grows to be in our own lands
And the wind hums low of storms
And the shade of the tree darkens,
And so the parting talk begins
And we step out from under the thorn
Beneath a rainbringing sky.

Sala sentle, we murmur, for both are leaving;
Tsamaya sentle, for both will remain in memory,
Under this fine tree that sheltered us.
Tsala yame, rra! – My friend, we part for now;
But though this world is fiercely wide
We are small and may meet again!