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