Khaliq-Brown

Nothings Changed

By Ismail Joubert

Website with poem

Small round hard stones click
under my heels,
seeding grasses thrust
bearded seeds
into trouser cuffs, cans,
trodden on, crunch
in tall, purple-flowering,
amiable weeds.
District six.
No board says it is:
but my feet know,
and my hands,
and the skin about my bones,
and the soft labouring of my lungs,
and the hot, white, inwards turning
anger of my eyes.

Brash with glass,
name flaring like a flag,
it squats
in the grass and weeds,
incipient Port Jackson trees:
new, up-market, haute cuisine,
guard at the gatepost,
whites only inn.

No sign says it is:
But we know where we belong. 


About Ismail Joubert: 

Info from poemhunter.com

Ismail Joubert was born in Egypt in 1920 and move to South Africa when he was young. He is a world war 2 veteran and he was an activist for Umkhonto we Sizwe in the South African struggle. Ismail died on 12/23/2002 after being hit by a car.

The writer was kicked out of district six and now has no home and has to travel around and and look for a place to stay. As he looks around he only finds places that only take in whites so he has no were to stay. The speaker thinks that what happened in district six was unfair and left lot of people homeless with no were to go. The poem shows this by telling us that all the inn that are close to them are for whites only so they cant use them. Figurative language used in this poem tells us that the speaker is tired when he talks about how his lungs are laboring that means that he is doing something that takes effort. Also the speaker mentions district six a place where there was a lot of people kick out from and left homeless. In lines 15 and 16 he says "and the hot, white, inwards turning anger of my eyes" meaning that he must be angry about what happened to him or the people who lived in district six. When he says "District six. No board says it is: but my feet know," He is saying that because he cant be in district six his feet has to take him some where else. I think the tone of this poem is mores sad and angry. It's sad because it is about how people were forced to leave their homes. It is angry because the speaker says in line 16 that he has anger in his eyes meaning that he must be mad that he had to leave his home. The theme of this poem is that lots of people have lost the homes in district six and now have to travel on foot and work hard job to live.

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