'A troubadour I traverse...' by Dennis Vincent Brutus

A troubadour, I traverse all my landexploring all her wide-flung parts with zestprobing in motion sweeter far than resther secret thickets with amorous handand I have laughed, disdaining those whose banned inquiry and movement, delighting in the test of will when doomed by Saracened arrest,choosing, like unarmed thumb, simply to standThus, quixoting till a cast-off of my landI sing and fare, person to loved-one pressed braced for this pressure and the captor's handthat snaps off servicelike a weathered strand:-no mistress-favour has adorned my breast only the shadow of an arrow-band.

Dennis Vincent Brutus (28 November 1924 – 26 December 2009) was a South African activist, educator, journalist and poet. He was jailed with Nelson Mandela in the 1960s. Brutus was arguably Africa's greatest and most influential modern poet after Leopold Sedar Senghor and Christopher Okigbo.

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