EARL

His parents gave him the name Thebe Neruda Kgositsile. Pronounced ‘teh-beh’, the Setswana word for ‘shield’. But he’s born in America, where, as Bruce Willis says in Pulp Fiction, ‘names don’t mean shit’. But Thebe’s can’t help meaning things. The middle name, Neruda, is after Pablo Neruda the poet, friend of Thebe’s dad. Thebe is born into poetry, ‘a second generation lyricist’: the son of Keorapetse Kgositsile, who was made South Africa’s Poet Laureate in 2006. Here is how Keorapetse begins the poem ‘Rejoice’, written when Thebe was eight years old:

Says Thebe Neruda of the vibrant smile

The eye so curious it is reluctant

To shut the world out even in sleep

In the poem’s final verse the poet addresses himself:

Poet leave him

Leave him alone

You have praised him

You have praised him

Without knowing his name.

In writing the son into a poem the poetfather has made the boy an object, but in this last verse realises his mistake: the boy is not his to write.

‘Rejoice’ takes on a different meaning reading it now 20 years after it was written. Leave him alone is what Keorapetse did. No longer than a year after writing ‘Rejoice’ he left for Africa, leaving Thebe and his mother, never to…