Statues By Karen Press

Some lonely men stand around this city

petrified in difficult moments.

They have the eyes of people who never felt love,

so alone, achieving the country.

The people they achieved never notice them,

the contradictory pulling of muscles inside the metal.

Like stray outcroppings of rock.

It’s impossible to believe they were ever the cause of anything.

From “The Lava of This Land: South African Poetry 1960-1996,” edited by Denis Hirson (TriQuarterly Books / Northwestern University Press: 328 pp., $17.95)