The revolution starts on the farms

On Sundays the kids would Skype from Canada
cold and distant, the images shivering,
their voices bouncing back from the walls.

The grandchildren’s mouths battling to form the words
they have unlearned Afrikaans
they do not know the somersaults the tongue can perform with the Taal:
klouter, kleuter and kielie
koggelmander and kwikstertjie
gems they will never be able to treasure,
to make their own.

Grandpa’s hands yearn to bend and build a draadkar for the boy
to let him feel the wooden grip of a catapult
to let the little rascal sit on his knee.

Grandma, old, leans into the camera
her glasses searching for the freckles on the girl’s nose.

Later they would also
get the news on the internet version of the Sunday paper
all the gory details:
how the three men,
aged 16,18 and 20, respectively,
tied the old man
with wire
how, with the glowing hot strykyster
on his chest,
they made him remember the code of the safe
later he had to painfully watch
how they opened up his wife
how each one entered her, how each one violated her,
he closed his eyes, pulled a shutter over his soul
before they put the gun to his head,
pulled the trigger.

The police only found the mutilated bodies late the Monday afternoon
and a gift from one of the perpetrators:
shit on a white plate, left on the handmade black stinkhout family table, passed on through generations.

They flew in from Canada, for the funeral,
put the farm on the market.

They left,
took the ashes back with them
and never, but never, ever
mentioned
grandpa or granny
or
that godforsaken fucked-up country