House of Blues

You live for these songs you inhabit

time and time over:

In them you uncover

nerve endings of truth, distil the essence

of longing and loss –

They fit you like old shoes, a favourite jacket.

Like broken butterflies they visit

through cracks in windows

and shut doors.

You cradle a guitar, your body sways

with the melody.

In your voice the miles

of distances travelled,

the warm contours and frayed edges

of the places your heart has been.

   ***

Now and again I strike a match in the dark

and scratch the surface of longing.

   ***

To be steady in one’s work,

and patient as a sail

that waits for the wind to fill it.

“View from My Window at Dawn”

The darkness lifts, becomes something lighter.

From her window

she watches the light, now only

a shift, a paler patch of sky,

trace the beginnings of the day.

Lights go on in windows, while others stay dark.

A brushstroke light or firm –

colours and textures revealing a city

half unveiled,

suspended between sleep and waking.

She paints quickly.

A desire insistent, frustrating, to render all of it

truthfully, as it is.

A lightness, gladness in her heart –

converge

in this silence, alone at dawn.

This blue-and-grey-tinged world, she knows, will soon

disappear, give way to a harsher light;

to the traffic and noise

of the street below.

But as it is lost, begins

to fade away, she sees that some of it, at last,

is there now:

a threshold place of light and dark,

of lights in windows, of chimneys and rooftops,

and far off buildings;

and of a light which, like the sky,

seeps through by degrees

from the window, porous, wet still,

of the canvas.

   ***

Now, if only for this moment,

no other world exists

save for the one she conjures

in this lamp-lit room.

   ***

Figure in a painting –

she emerges

from the canvas,

tells the painter

of her dreams.

 - Eduard Burle

A flame that burned to the end * – by Harry Owen

The sad truth is that, before I first came here ten years ago, I knew almost nothing about South African poets. That changed very quickly, however.

One of the first books I was given (in May 2007) was called Dog Latin by someone I had never heard of at the time but whom I would later come to know as both fellow poet and friend – Norman Morrissey. A year later, in June 2008 at the launch of his new collection, Triptych, at the old Reddits Books & Coffee in New Street, he signed my book with the note: “Harry, The first copy sold!” I had come a long way in twelve months.

So it was with a sense of profound sadness that I learned of Norman’s death last week. He had retired owing to ill health in 2002 from his career as a lecturer in English at several South African universities, including UCT and Fort Hare, in order to concentrate on his writing at his home in Hogsback.

But before that he had to undergo lengthy treatment for profound depression, a debilitating condition which he faced with candour and courage. As he writes in ‘Preface to St Mark’s Diary’ about poems written during this period: “I was working through a breakdown, doing cold turkey on years of sleeping pills and painkillers, and at last getting full clinical diagnosis on a condition that began with an infection trashing my nervous system in November 1962, a month after my 13^th birthday.”

Undoubtedly, Norman struggled – and so, inevitably, did those with whom he shared his life; he could not then have been easy to live with. Yet he wrote his way through it all, latterly with the love and companionship of another poet – Silke Heiss, whom he married in 2013 and who added immeasurably to the quality of his final years.

That same year I was privileged to include a wonderful poem by Norman in the anthology For Rhino in a Shrinking World.  Called ‘Lord of Life’, it tells the magical true story, from when he worked as a ranger for the old Natal Parks Board, of Norman’s relationship with a bull rhino whose “quiet gravity saved me, I’m sure/ many a vanity or vagueness of phrase”. I heard Norman read this poem twice: once at Reddits Poetry here in Grahamstown and once at the McGregor Poetry Festival in 2015.

So while I will certainly miss Norman Morrissey I shall also continue to be inspired by his courage, his fortitude and his unrelenting belief, enriched ultimately by the devotion of his wife Silke, in the power of love to prevail over all hardship. This was his prayer, and I think it was answered.

Prayer

The candle gutters down

till the wick floats in the last wax,

burns at both ends,

gives twice the light

because

of its nearing extinction:

let me

be

like that

the whole thread of my life

a flame

from childhood to old age

in one

clear, unwavering

consummation.

Norman Morrissey

(from Strandloop, Echoing Green Press, 2016)

Norman's Memorial Event in Hogsback will be held tomorrow, Saturday 5th August 2017, in the Vula Vista Conference Centre at 3:30pm. The Memorial Event at Outeniqua Moon near Mossel Bay will be held on Saturday 2nd September 2017 at 3:30pm.
 

*This article appeared in Grahamstown's Grocotts Mail, 4 August 2017

Four poems for Norman by Brian Walter

Presences

Your monkey troop clambers

in the winter magnolia – chuckling

and chirping and reaching for buds,

scampering and riding

high the bending branches

like boys in a Frost poem.

And in the lit morning,

from the next house, the strains

of Pianoman finger the air.

These are the sounds you hear

in a poet’s garden, he having left

this while, and roving out west. 

29th July 2017

  

Seer

On an autumn day in Africa

you came from your mountain

to tell of a face you saw

in your almond tree.  Nothing

you say could alarm me: I trust

your eyes and mind: ancestors

have been kind enough to call

on you.  Myths are making you

their own.  When you left, humbly

I plucked for my autumn vase

a living twig of wild olive,

the last sprig of almond

from my tree, and one bronze

chrysanthemum, the first

this season.  Autumn: you see past

foliage to the very word of tree. 

from Tracks

Gaga footbridge

                   Alice days, for Norman Morrissey

Time was the skies opened,

and we on a motorbike

going home via Chitibunga’s bottle store:

but the dip of the Gaga was flooded,

so we ducked off right, and over

the footbridge, undaunted and soaking.

After our transaction, kindly and warm ‒

do you know the big guy was later killed

by robbers, right at his till, and he so hardy

and big-boned ‒ you held our two packets

of beer, one in each hand, on the pillion,

balancing, arms dependent. Times like these,

I remember the first beer, standing now

in dry clothes ‒ watching the downpour hitting

at everything, water washing in gushes

where we never thought water would flow ‒

and laughing,

life balanced in your safe hands,

motorcycle passenger,

over the straight and narrow footbridge.

  

from Poems Packed for Travel

Ngqika’s Kop 

A smoke haze rises from far-off forests

this weekend, while we work about the house,

or watch patches of cricket on TV.  “Pine-forest fire,

in the hills,” we agree, and consider

how the forecast cold front, that now chills

the test in Cape Town, will soon quench this blaze.                         

But tonight flames still crackle in the dark,

crowning the mountains, right up where the stars

hold the sky.  And then ― this Monday morning ―

snow.  That African hill stands majestic,

wears white Ethiopian skirts, and appears so brave

and blessed that all looks well with the world. 

Watching from our lowlands, we did not know

that you’d spent the holidays fire-fighting,

beating raging flames from neighbour houses,

smoke-choked and seared; and how your team

of volunteers rushed to ever moving

crisis-points, calling details and command;                                           

               

how, late that Sunday night, so many of you,

hearing sounds of peaceful susurration,

left exhausted houses to stand outside,

calm in the dousing rain that at last fell,

then crept indoors to sleep; and how your dreams

coalesced collectively into snow.

from Mousebirds

Events

Musing,

dozing, wrapped in a blanket,

the fire alive as a serpent’s tongue

I’m lost

in the events

amidst the embers.

9.6.2017

Snake

All day

I’ve been the snake of the medicine cards:

weaving over the sands of my mind,

thoughts coruscations I slide across

and leave

along the way.

10.6.2017

Matter

My legs folded,

I went down on my knees

before the filthy gutter

– but kind folk came,

got me back on my feet,

steadied me,

made

the experience

matter.

19.6.2017

No matter

Where can we write:

tissues of visions

that melt into one another

no matter how one withers.

17.7.2017 (This was Norman’s penultimate poem)

Norman Morrissey

Best drier

The best drier

of tears

is the wind.

23.7.2017

Still calls

I put your underpants

back in the drawer,

your t-shirt into the cupboard.

A time will come

to lose

those rituals

but for now

the Wood owl

still calls.

25.7.2017

In each other

At our usual

picnic spot

on the R63

I stop

to note my gladness

at these places

across

the country

we shared.

We were

without wanting

to be

a restless pair

forced to travel

these roads

– never really

at home

except

in

each

other.

16.8.2017

Silke Heiss

Time

Three women sit,

cooking, eating lunch,

while the working team

shovels and pours cement,

pounds down the shapes.

At the door of the container

where wind swirls, it is cool.

Inside, the office part

and storage space for brick-making machines

is deeper in heat.

The women’s shoes are sensible,

like boy’s shoes,

cement splattered, shaped

to the work, speaking

of their place on this earth,

this work, hard lives.

We’ve had to wait for our meeting,

because cement, mixed,

waits for no one as it sets. 

- Brian Walter

            Peace in Our Time

This bronze dome

drove ants to nest

in the moistened pot of the Peace Rose,

they have leached the roots

so there can be no flower

– the bud that tried

starved on the stem,

Peace in our time

sorely struck:

Isis gnawing at the guts of its own civilisation,

Malema preaching genocide,

a Trumpet of Jericho braying in the White House.

The rough beast

has slouched to Bethlehem

– been born.

                                    21/12/2016

 - Norman Morrissey

            Scarecrow

Wings,

a raven

wild about the hollows of my head

– croaking fears

I finally talked back

into the skies,

made my heart a scarecrow

to keep him

there.

 - Norman Morrissey

Helenvale evening

In the twilight the last children

play the pavements,

pigeons circle the waning grey

where a few kites tug

their twine,

the boys catching the last breeze:

and close to the houses

flits

night’s first bat.

 - Brian Walter

Carry on

Numb from news
– hate-speech, violence, lies,
noble essays, reasoned tries
defending values, hoping
to avert bad trouble, blues –

pained by poems
I’ve proofed
– by children and their guides
in townships under siege
by gangsters (“Satan’s servants”) –

I walk The Bluff
knowing, seeing,
but not feeling
the cliffs caressed by mist,
grey old bracken bending,
looking at their young
in bright green hoodies
coming up.

Stop.
Will I ever be
at one
with what I see
again? Grieved I stand
for loss
of me.

The mists heave lightly,
sucked by sun’s eternal thirst,
revealing slopes of trees
that never have been cursed,
the Proteas and Watsonias
hold up and shake
with flirting birds
(whose avian tongues dispel the worst)

and this
they do:
cancel me
to pull me through.

And I continued
walking.
I saw a Longcrested Eagle …
the wind flipped
through his crest
as if it were the Yellow Pages,
and there in silhouette:
he was all focused, black
and grand
and free
to look about him
there
on The Bluff;

and a little mongoose
did its delicate staccato stipple,
frittered over the path
and was gone;

and I knew
I must go on
cancelling my self
– cancel news and lands of pain –
if I want
to carry on.

                        20th November 2016

 - Silke Heiss

between the cavities of my ribs

that is where i want to be

there where continents of sound

flow from my throat and fingers

and i give birth to a whole new earth

there where the mighty poetry

determines the rhythm of the day

i feel the interminable knocking in my throat

the never-ending pricking of my ears

i stand to attention

ready for the mighty verse

to land on my palms with full-blooded wings

i dig in the seashells in search

for the truth of the word

i scratch under the toenails of the ostrich

hungry for the metaphor that will surpass all other metaphors

the words lie like ghostly footprints

on the shadows of the night

refusing to be seen or captured

and yet, like small black poppy seeds

the relentless willpower of

the poetry

lies

between

the

cavities

of

my

ribs

when the word comes

i know how rapturously the syllables

will melt like ripe slices of avocado on my tongue

let me lie deep within the grip of the word

make me swoon, make me unconscious,

make me fly, make me laugh,

make me shiver

and
make me free

 - Lara Kirsten

Hanging the exhibition: 1989

Artists work in the gallery,

moving things,

calling orders, pitted against

the tempest of time:

outside, a little flock

of white-eyes,

a twittering group of swees

brush the bush,

dab colour on the trees,

like autumn hands at work

with palette, brush and turpentine.

 - Brian Walter

Freedom is

The wind on your skin,
your mother’s voice,
embracing a friend,
and that tree
against the skyline
dancing
with its branches.

                       2nd November 2016

The melody of rain

The melody of rain in gutter,
the quiet glow of light,
the sated tummy after supper
when everything is right.

                        21st November 2016

 - Silke Heiss

in die skemering van die verlies

in die skemering van 
die verlies
is my keel nog troebel
van die wil-wil trane
die dae sonder jou hang soos
sugte aan die deurkosyne

dit is asof my selle nou weet
dat ek nie aan jou kan klou nie
iets in my het laat gaan 
die hunkering na 
jou fisiese aanwesigheid 
het 
so ietwat
bedaar

in die skemering van 
die verlies
is my hart stil
vlietende beelde van jou 
beweeg in my geestesoog
soos wolke in die wind

oralste lê leegtes van 
jou nie-hier-wees
ek kyk met 'n hartseer gelukkigheid na
die reën wat op die pompombome val
die aarde juig oor die breek van die droogte
maar my hart klem met die wete
dat jy nie meer die nat-aarde-reuk 
deur jou trillende neusgate insuig nie

in die skemering van 
die verlies
staan ek mymerend in 
die diep rivier wat 
die onafwendbare verhale 
van die lewe en dood om 
my ledemate fluister

 - Lara Kirsten

Fruit

My mind is Port St Johns,

with feathered clouds on a morning sky,

sub-tropical tall tree ideas

standing still,

and above all ravens turn

dark feathered, hard birds: no shit.

Their full-throated high rasps

turn the morning

and my mind is in their distant eyes

a-watching.

Now they are down

hopping, or stiff-legged stalking

on the green, like thoughts in fruit,

never as imagined ‒

bits of bread in pincer bills,

and all the other things they eat.

 - Brian Walter