Alexandra (poem)

"Alexandra" is a poem by South African poet and writer Mongane Wally Serote.

Serote's poems about places, particularly his Alexandra poems, grapple with the problems of squalor, violence, death, destitution, exploitation and the Black People's quest for identity and a sense of community. In the poem Alexandra, the speaker's inner-child addresses his 'mother'; "Alexandra, my beginning was knotted to you, just like you knot my destiny". Alexandra (the place) is forever connected to the speaker, just like a mother would be forever connected to her child. The personification of Alexandra (the place) as mother-figure allows the speaker to emphasize the bond he has with the place; wherever he goes he carries the 'throb' of Alexandra deep within him – it has made him who he is. He was nourished on the "dirty waters of (her) dongas" and when he is thirsty he cries out for this 'mother', this mother who frightens him and whom he suspects to be cruel. He pleads for answers from this 'mother'; "Do you love me Alexandra?" and "What have you done to me?" Despite not receiving answers he cannot leave although others have distanced themselves from the memories and walked over him to go to "far places". He is a product of his roots, he has been shaped by this 'mother' Alexandra, and he acknowledges that in the end he will always find his way back to her to lie amid the rubble, "simple and black". The speaker of the poem creates an image to the reader, what his life was like during the apartheid times in South Africa.