The speaker states that he has seen “throngs of people” which means that he has seen a densely packed crowd of peopleHe stands there observing this moment and wonders at the lives these people live beyond this train station when they “disappear into little holes of resting”.
The speaker uses a metaphor to compare the train tunnels to the oppressed black people going to their very small hovel or shacks.The hole can literally mean that their traveling home after work. Through the tunnel. The poet can also compare the “hole” to depression. The poem subtly implies that black bodies are defined above and “beyond” their physical oppression.
For there to be a “beyond”, the poet implicitly suggests the black community’s potential to transcend the fear instilled by the white state. This suggestion relies on an inward movement that recognizes individual alienation and its communal nature, the singular and the “multitude”. What prevents the members of the multitude from becoming anonymous symbols of black suffering is Sepamla’s attentiveness to their everyday interiorities — their laughter, clicking tongues, and disgruntled chat.The tone is fearful, that the way black people are being treated and how their being oppressed may never end.
He wonders at “the loneliness beyond”. The imagery and the dehumanisation of these people, their lack of individuality. The constant use of the word “I’ve” serves to separate the speaker from the crowd he is observing – think about the possible significance of the fact that while thinking about “the loneliness beyond”, he too stands alone. he loneliness evoked by Sepamla may be figured as a catalyst for self-recognition and change. The movement from an exterior to an interior contemplation of apartheid’s effects on black subjectivity and Serote’s depictions of the everyday articulate notions of blackness which counter white definitions.
