Mangaliso Buzani
PRESENCES AND ABSENCES
It is notoriously difficult to remain fully alive in the present moment. Emotions related to the past and the future are always intruding on our awareness.
Sometimes, it takes a strong poem to teach us how to handle such intrusions imaginatively.
Mangaliso Buzani is a poet and lecturer whose work often makes the transitions between past, present and future feel almost seamless. He published his first book of poems, Ndisabhala Imibongo, in isiXhosa in 2014. His second, a naked bone (Deep South, 2019), won the Glenna Luschei Prize in the year of its publication. In these striking poems, Buzani spins great beauty out of the joys and sorrows of everyday life. This month, he shared two fragments from longer poems in this collection with the AVBOB Poetry Project.
Read the poems and notice the ease with which he uses his memory and imagination to conjure two very different versions of the afterlife.
I will be gone
Tomorrow I will be gone
hammered thin with stones
I will take only my soul with me
and leave dead meat behind
You will choose a coffin for me
a spaceship to heaven
where I will wait for you
planting flowers in the clouds
there I will open a door for you
where lovers sing for god
Since there are no chairs in heaven
I will leave my bones behind
for you to make a bridge
to reach god
Notice how matter-of-factly the poet tells us of his impending death in this beautiful fragment. He seems quite unconcerned at the prospect of leaving only “dead meat” behind as he departs for heaven. In the final stanza, he helpfully instructs us to use his bones as a bridge to this version of the afterlife.
On the one hand, the poet is telling us that life is transient: by tomorrow, he will have crossed over into a totally different reality. At the same time, he promises to open a door that will enable us to join him. Notice that his version of heaven is not sullen or deadly serious. On the contrary, it is a destination full of gardeners planting flowers and singing lovers, which can be reached by spaceship. It feels intimately connected to our own world by threads of love and memory.
Sign language
The lead singer was Lahliwe, my mother, and Tukie
and Tonogo were the backup singers. They sang Utloa
sefefo samoea. We were their small congregation, we
clapped our hands, our grandmother hitting the side
of the wardrobe because we had no drum. We were
the ears to the singers. I wonder if they are still singing
together behind the moon.
The intimate situation described here creates a very different kind of bridge, this time into the distant past. Here, the older women in the poet’s family are singing hymns to the accompaniment of a beat kept on a wardrobe. We are surprised to learn that these women are no longer alive: their songs are still so vivid in his memory that he wonders whether they are still singing them somewhere, “behind the moon”. In a few short lines, Buzani has dissolved the border between past and present, until we can almost hear these songs ourselves.
In the next few days, write a poem about a childhood incident that is still vividly present to you. Describe it in a way that brings it to life for someone who reads or hears it.
The annual AVBOB Poetry Competition reopened its doors for submissions on 1 August 2025. Visit www.avbobpoetry.co.za today and learn how you can enter your best words.