Sheep magazine Archive 2: issues 10-17

WRITING
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WALL
PAINTING
Ivan Vladislavić
On the pavement outside No. 10 Blenheim:
a tall man whose splattered overall and
abstracted demeanour spoke of long
experience in house-painting. He had
spread a strip of plastic at the foot of the
garden wall, beneath our Ndebele mural,
and was stirring a tin of painwith a stick.
The mural must have been two or three
years old by then. He’s touching up the
cracks, I told myself hopefully, although it
was obvious what he was really doing. As I
drew near, he laid the stick across the top of
the tin and went to stand on the other side
of the street. Like a woodsman sizing up a
tree, just before he chopped it down.
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Artwork: Esther Mahlangu, 2002
I couldn’t watch. I went on to the Gem to
fetch the paper. Coming home, I nearly
made a detour along Albemarle Street to
avoid the scene entirely, but it had to be
faced.
MAY DAY 2016