"Nightfall in Soweto" by Oswald Mbuyiseni Mtshali i(1988)
1. Nightfall comes like
a dreaded disease
seeping through the pores
of a healthy body
and ravaging it beyond repair.
2. A murderer's hand,
lurking in the shadows,
clasping the dagger,
strikes down the helpless victim.
3. I am the victim.
I am slaughtered
every night in the streets.
I am cornered by the fear
gnawing at my timid heart;
in my helplessness I languish.
4. Man has ceased to be man
Man has become beast
Man has become prey.
5. I am the prey;
I am the quarry to be run down
by the marauding beast
let loose by cruel nightfall
from his cage of death.
6. Where is my refuge?
Where am I safe?
Not in my matchbox house
Where I barricade myself against nightfall.
7. I tremble at his crunching footsteps,
I quake at his deafening knock at the door.
Open up!" he barks like a rabid dog
thirsty for my blood.
8. Nightfall! Nightfall!
You are my motal enemy.
But why were you ever created?
Why cant it be daytime?
Daytime forever more?
What the Poem Leaves You With
Mtshali builds the whole poem around one idea: night is not rest in this world, it is danger. It arrives like sickness, like a murderer's hand, and the speaker is not watching from a distance. He is the victim, the prey, the quarry.
The fear follows him home. Even his matchbox house, where he barricades himself, offers no real safety. The knock at the door and the command to open up turn ordinary night sounds into a threat.
By the final lines the speaker is no longer describing nightfall. He is arguing with it, calling it his mortal enemy and asking why it had to exist at all. The wish for daytime forever is the wish for a life without that fear.