Paradise Road by Chris Mann

The winds of change were blowing hard the day that I left home, I drove down to the old stone pier and watched a rough sea foam.

I loved to jump right off that pier and swim the river mouth, a barefoot boy in khaki shorts in Africa’s deep south.

Old folks ate ice cream in their cars parked by the beach café, like them I thought those stormy skies would one day blow away.

A man held out a fish to me beside the public phone, but I was driving out of there into the great unknown.

I turned up the radio, the music overflowed, I had started yearning, I had started burning for Paradise Road.

I drove right through the backveld where I had been born, I lived a while in cities feeling lost and torn.

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I met so many drifters, dreamers old and young, all trying to make an Africa where they could belong.

Some talked of power, and some of sacrifice, they were also crying for, they were also dying for the road to Paradise.

I lived a while in suburbs, then took a shack-land track, I met a wandering prophet, a green cross on his back.

He said he’d seen the rainbow across a burning lake, he could have been Isaiah or even William Blake.

He beat a goat-skin drum and sang to ease his load, he was also yearning, he was also burning for Paradise Road.

I’m right back where I started in small town Africa, a troubadour still on the road a song-poem in a car.

I’ve heard the dove of heaven inside a pepper tree, I’ve seen the holy fish swim a troubled sea.

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I know in every heart there’s a dream to be expressed, I know a bright-haired angel can dance in every breast.

I’ve watched Mandela fade, so many hopes explode, Thulani nonke, Ningamlibel’ Madiba.*

but who’s not still yearning but who’s not still burning for Paradise Road.

*Be quiet everyone, Don’t forget Madiba.

‘Madiba’ was Mandela’s clan-name.

Chris Mann

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