Poetry Anthology - Cape Town Morning

Poetry Anthology - Cape Town Morning

Text:

Winter has passed. The wind is back.                       - seasons are clearing+moving: -> change

Window panes rattle old rust,                                   - spring = regeneration/rebirth

summer rising.

Street children sleep, shaven mummies in sacks,   - poverty+street children -> malnourished

eyelids weighted by the dreams of coins,               - mummies = death*

beneath them treasure of small knives.                   - desire to be rich

Flower sellers add fresh blossoms                          - adding new life in dead/sour buckets**

to yesterday's blooms, sour buckets                             - this creates juxtaposition & contrast: life/death

filled and spilling.

And trucks digest the city's sediment                    - enjambment

men gloved and silent                                           - ambiguous: men helping? or sinister?***

in the municipal jaws.

Notes:

Title: 'morning' = pun: 'mourning' -> sorrow for Cape Town?

Themes: apartheid, poverty, deterioration of Cape Town

Freeform = economic state of Cape Town

Winter = death; Spring = life. --> as Spring rises, the city gets rid of old death. (Rubbish, flowers, sediment, poor people)

*mummies = death. This contrasts with the youth of the children

** 'fresh blossoms' = hope, but it has been ruined by...

***... the city. The city = a great beast, which consumes all life it withholds.