Sotho — Hymn 63

The young woman began to cry. “Then pray. Even a line. Even a whisper.”

The priest was silent for a long moment. Then he stood and walked to the dusty harmonium in the corner. He pumped the pedals. A wheezing, flat note emerged. He tried to find the opening chord of Hymn 63—a simple, descending triad, like rain beginning on a tin roof. But the harmonium only coughed a discordant groan. The cold had warped the reeds.

“I was a boy in the choir,” Mofokeng said, his voice a low rumble. “Under the old mango tree, before this church was built. The deacon taught us Morena Jesu, ke rata ho phela – Lord Jesus, I want to live. Hymn 63. I have sung it for baptisms, for weddings, for the funerals of both my sons. The melody was a path in the dark. Tonight, I lay down to sleep, and the path was gone. The words… silence. Only the wind.” sotho hymn 63

Father Michael sighed, lighting a single candle. “Then why are you here?”

The priest blinked. “Left your head?” The young woman began to cry

Father Michael turned to the old man. “You said the hymn had left you.”

Mofokeng did not move. His hands, gnarled from a lifetime of digging the hard Highveld soil, rested on the wooden pew. “Father, I am not here for the class.” Even a whisper

Mofokeng smiled. It was a tired, ancient smile. “No, Father. I had left it. I was trying to remember it as a thing. A set of notes. But a hymn is not a thing. It is a road you walk only when someone is lost beside you.”

Inside, sixty-year-old Ntate Mofokeng knelt before the altar. He wasn’t praying. He was waiting.