Edlaw Mansions

I was born in a nursing home in the Southern suburbs of Johannesburg.  Why I got this special treatment at a time when home birthing was the norm, I never did find out.  When my mother and I got to go home it was to a two storey block of flats on Central Avenue which is the main road through Mayfair.  The flats were tiny two bedroom, one bathroom affairs and number 3 was to be my first home.

My first permanent abode (after the womb, I must stress)

Was number three Edlaw Mansions, Central Avenue no less

Sadly not Illovo nor Athol nor even Eastleigh my dear

But Mayfair, near Fordsburg, the wrong trackside I fear

 

And “Mansions” was poetic licence misused to excess

So grand a title far removed from reality, I guess

Yet its two bedroom flats served for many a year

As refuge and haven for all who lived there

 

A veritable potpourri of people used this address

All forced there by hard times, by financial distress

And things were seldom as they might outward appear

With any signs of prosperity just a fragile veneer

 

In the absence of affluence one could sense nonetheless

The unmistakable presence of class consciousness

And while the language division was painfully clear

Politeness and civility is what you’d publicly hear

 

Those on their way up might try hard to impress

With a new woollen suit or a smart winter dress

And those of less fortune would pretend to good cheer

Then blow their last shilling on two bottles of beer

 

Gone now the mansions, in the name of progress

But neither absence nor time can serve to repress

The memory of those who arrived in joy or in tear

To find warmth in her shelter, to be held by her near