What Does it Take?

I grew up in the violence
of apartheid. Do I want
to go back? Even now,

my significant objects
here in my treehouse
flat with a balcony,

relieved to feel each
angry mile of history
disintegrate, one memory

raps its knuckles
on my heart’s door.
Late one night

the door bell rang
at my cousin’s house.
The woman who worked

for my grandmother
stood bleeding before us,
deep cuts on her cheeks,

slashed with a broken bottle.
My uncle sent her away,
to the servant’s entrance.

Shut the door on her
split and bloody face.
That day I began

to pack my invisible bags,
pictured the water and sky
I would cross to leave this,

knowing wounds heal
but asking what does it take
for the soul to recover?

© Copyright Naomi Woddis 2008

Inspired and taken from answers to the the following questions:

What image illustrates the true nature of time ?
Describe the first time you saw another person’s blood ?
What does the word home mean to you ?

Please email me on poetrymosaic@btinternet.com if you fancy taking part. Please make replies no more than 100 words.

Shaun Levin
I grew up in the violence of apartheid South Africa in the 1960s and 1970s. I was spending the night at my cousins up the road – in the days when everyone I knew seemed to live up the road or round the corner. It was late, someone rang the doorbell, and I went to open. The woman who worked for my grandmother (who lived down the road) was standing there with deep cuts in her cheeks. She had been cut by someone with a broken bottle. I think it was the first time I had seen flesh cut open. I don’t remember blood, but there must have been. Maybe, too, what I’m remembering is the contrast between the brownness of her skin and the bright pink-red of her flesh. I remember being horrified that my uncle told the woman to go round the back, to the servants’ entrance, rather than come in through the front door.

Wounds heal, but does the soul recover?

What does the word home mean to you?

The place I like coming back to – ie. my treehouse on Blackstock Road. Home, though, is South Africa. But just because a place is home doesn’t mean one has to, or want to live there.

Sophie Woolley
Nice flat with a balcony.