With the stones

This morning, in my dream, we sat

close together, near the smooth stones

you carried from Roundstone Beach

all those years ago.

I sat down there next to you as the sun rose

(though in truth you were still fast asleep

in the bed we share). And our hands moved

slowly over the stones, as if remembering

some ancient journey.

You told me once: if these

can become smooth and round and large like this,

knocking about in that cold Atlantic sea,

maybe we too could become less jagged,

less sharp-edged and brittle.

Ah, but now you are awake,

and the air around us

is suddenly crisp and urgent, and our thoughts turn

from the calm smoothness of stone

towards blood and skin. Today we give thanks

for the urgency of touch

that cannot wait; for all

our many rough edges: each scar, blemish and dent,

each sharp word that jolts us

into awareness of these late summer days,

turning already towards autumn—

and each particular leaf about to fall.

 - Jacques Coetzee

The black sky

And the black sky,

and the little house white-washed –

the light cuts like a square green interior

the window, with a woman looking out,

and outside, our side, a child

saunters past.

What do we need?

A boy, and a dog, on the grey pavement,

the night sky black

as if it is the outside of everything,

like the frame,

an unreachable beyond

not in the picture,

of it.

 - Brian Walter

List of numbers

I still keep their numbers

in the file labelled “telephone list”

on my slow computer:

one for the man who read back my half-formed poems to me

in a monotonous voice, daring me to throw them

away, until I slowly learned

to sing more softly, urgently;

one for the man who fed me olives and whiskey

though it must have been clear by then my being straight

was not just a passing phase after all;

one for the woman who gave me a sheaf of corn

because she didn’t know how to say goodbye;

one for the woman who fed me rare plants

and asked me politely, after I’d toasted her

with the umteenth song,

if I didn’t come with a pause button for God’s sake;

one for the woman I hardly ever phoned

because I could not think of a question

that would be worthy of a mind like hers;

one for the Greek restaurant that no longer exists,

where I duelled with someone over halva and ice cream

because we had no money to buy

a second portion;

one for the man who dared me

to do the wrong thing, to live

dangerously, and then died of it;

one for the man who fathered me well,

and then asked me, just before the end,

to forgive him for his ignorance.

You can consign the body to the fire—

the bills, paid or unpaid; the outmoded ways of being

and the very bad poetry.

The names, the names are not consumed.

They refuse to be anything else

than the sum of my parts,

hovering now on an invisible screen

without ever quite adding up.

 - Jacques Coetzee

Frames

Used to the firm metal scaffolding

manufactured in segments,

standard in South Africa,

I guess my mind constructed them

the world over: so in Kuala Lampur

those bamboo racks, neat and high,

surprised me, caught my organic eye,

and the wooden poles of Lagos,

or low slung around buildings in Juba.

With imagination swaying,

I marvel at the organic vitality,

the close-to-groundness,

the human trust in the ways of growth

in tension with the more aggressive

ways of metal and concrete,

the firm safety we seek

to scaffold our lives.

 - Brian Walter

Deep Listening

It happened again yesterday:

in the middle of a fine conversation

about sublime and lofty things

something in me switched off, and I found myself focusing

on the slight pull at the pit of my stomach

as you stepped away from me for a moment

to pour wine for an honoured guest.

I could still hear the separate music

in our four voices, but

the words, the words had gone out of range.

The only detailed information then

came from the song of my blood—

subterranean, preverbal—

calling for your touch across the table.

There are no words for such music:

not in company, not when we’re alone.

All I could say for certain then

to myself, under my breath,

was that all lofty things,

raised up in defiance of gravity—

all the immortal words, and all great music—

seemed to be reconfigured there;

rooted again in the fire

that sings and sings, unheard, in our hidden blood.

 - Jacques Coetzee