Neanderthal burial site at Shanidar

The time between us and them –
what is it? Sixty, seventy, eighty thousand years?
Or the time it takes a team
of bright-eyed archaeologists
to map this cave and read the many bones in it,
to decipher their cryptic message:
this pollen, surrounding the body
of the patriarch;
bones that have healed imperfectly
after a savage injury? Or the time

they must have had to tend to him,
to gather shards of who knows what stories
to warm him there, unable now
to hunt or gather food himself?

Our instruments suggest
the timeline, can hope to guess
how often they returned to this place,
how many generations of dead
lie buried here. But what songs they sang,
or what they feared or worshipped
as they brought their wild flowers
we cannot say. From this
or any other distance, it is impossible
to establish the shape of ritual
to everyone’s satisfaction.

 - Jacques Coetzee

kamerade

ek laat my een oog toeval
en sit my vinger liggies op my oogbal
ek voel die ratse reaktiewe spierkragtigheid wat
my oog heen en weer katrol

met my vinger in sagte aanraking met
die flinke oog-aksie
besef ek net meer hoe
hard die oog deur die dag EN die nag werk
hoe ver en fyn sy kan sien

ek hou my handpalms warm en
saggies oor my twee oë
ek murmureer 'n innige dankie vir
hierdie twee kamerade
wat so mooi na my kyk

 - Lara Kirsten

Unfinished music

     for Hugh

All day I’ve been following your clearest lines:
walked within easy earshot of the sea,
though I sit at my desk inland, and hardly move at all.

So often you’ve walked the beach at Scarborough,
listening for the sea’s many voices,
that by now you conjure them effortlessly:

voices of drowned sailors; echoes
of spent empires, their arrogance
scattered for all to see; the separation
of lovers, of parents and children; and always
those long, empty beaches, for us to walk
down, down through the seven ages to oblivion.

And you, choosing not to be overwhelmed
by that grand chorus, learned instead
to fasten your mind to each shifting

detail; to pare down language
to its essentials:
everything you saw and heard reassembled
into digestible fragments
of the great, unwritten script –

seventeen syllables summoning, again and again,
hints of bird-calls, salt spray,
ascetic silence, and the silence
after lust and its merciful quenching.

Dear friend, I’m sorry that time
always returns; that in the end
there has to come an end to exploration.
Meanwhile no rock, no bird, no grain of sand,
no gesture of yours or mine
is identical to any other;
each one a fragment
of that great music you still hear
and channel, which must of course
remain forever unfinished.

 - Jacques Coetzee

rogbrood en lemoensap

           vir Kim

jou liefde is die sagte, koubare tekstuur
van jou handgemaakte rogbrood
jou omarming is die soete doop
van jou varsgeparsde winter-lemoensap

die nasmaak bly talm onder my verhemelte
as ek my laaste maal op aarde kan kies

moet dit dít wees -
                 jóú rogbrood en jóú lemoensap

die herinnering van ons liefde
plant ek soos ‘n veld vol rog in my hart
en die lemoene sal soos helder sonne
oor ons dorstige tonge skyn

 - Lara Kirsten

Gathering

          for Norman Morrissey, with apology to W. B. Yeats

Whatever parts of ourselves we could summon
we have brought to this reading
in your honour, dedicated
to your scattered poems –
lovingly gathered now, distilled
until they seemed inevitable, destined
in a way so few words are. We understood

that we had to start at the finish
every time, and retrace
your steps. Every strong reader knows
that is the only way to approach
a poem: leaning against the door
at the top of the winding stair of another’s words,
then turning back, slowly descending.

Compelled by that brittle music, the way
you transmuted suffering into song,
how could we not
turn and be led down the ladder
into the broken ground where you stood
when you found them? You told us

how you would be transfixed by something
you saw by chance on the side of the road you travelled
on your motorbike, day after day.
Before the reading, a friend described one poem,
preserved in your handwriting, that still bears witness –
your hand shaking so, he said, it’s hard to read those
flashes of recognition, records
of a moment you sucked to the marrow as you went.

And so we finished at the start, as we should:
tracing the movement
from shoulder to straining wrist as you set down
these impassioned fragments to find us
and gather us back into this moment, singing.

 - Jacques Coetzee

nog mens nog vlam

ek sien die mense wie verby my loop
en bewonder elkeen se hier-wees

hulle het glip gly stik crash bang
val huil vuur virus
water mes gif van die aanvallende lewe oorleef
om hier te staan

nog mens
nog vlam

 - Lara Kirsten

Spirit

I don’t know much about the things of spirit,
though each year the numbers
of my personal dead
keep swelling.

These days, when I try to talk
to my upright, sober, dead father,
I never fail to remember
that first Covid funeral – beautiful, harrowing –
six months ago now, in the first summer of lockdown.

Only the ghost of connection
there between us, but
we sat in the presence of pure sorrow
at a life that was suddenly gone; pure joy
at the full life that had been. There was much talk of God
and of carousing into the small hours, until

I could not tell such things apart
in the general intoxication.

“We must stop crying now,”
someone said, in tears, at the very end.
“Sam would have said: the brandy’s waiting.”

That’s when I knew, all the way
along my blood and into my bones:
I’m still a beginner in the things of spirit.
The only speech I truly know
is with the living, still,
though my father’s voice speaks through mine, uninvited;
though the ashes of dogs remain in their urns on the desk.

Always again I choose
that long draught that burns my throat –
while there is anything left on this side
to celebrate or savour.

 - Jacques Coetzee

die janfiskaal 

die janfiskaal bly loer deur
die ruigtes van my verse totdat
hy 'n paar onwaaksame krieke van
my woorde plattrek
en hulle doodluiters oor
die doringdraad van
my tong
hang

 - Lara Kirsten

Train journey

        i.

The Warsaw railway station
is grey-clean, in the modern style,
with electronic announcements
and flickering changes on the sign-boards.

Here, a sparrow hops her two-legged way
then flits up to the by-me-unseen rafters
of her life,

recalling the bird in Bede’s history
winging through the mead hall,

then out into the darkness
beyond light and time –

for us it is time to find
our platform for Krakow.


        ii.

She runs with large strides
that her bum emphasizes,

down the platform, step by step,
late for something;

then she, looking harassed;
and he in his suit, fast striding:

slaves to the time of capital,
never early enough.


        iii.

Was there, in the hard days,
such hurry?

Did guards with guns
own time,

each slow
moment?


        iv.

A lone cattle truck
stands still

at Auschwitz-Birkenau,
the train lines coming

through the brick-arched gate
to this terminus.


        v.

Lost at the Krakow station,
you rush to find the tickets to Warsaw;

I, flustered amongst languages,
seek our platform,

telling a young woman
– she speaks a little English –

that I don’t know where to go
for Warsaw; barely know where I am.

“You,” she asserts carefully,
“are in Krakow, Poland”.

We laugh at absurdity. She walks
from my life. Then you, Cape mossie

flitting through the foreign crowd,
come gleefully, flapping tickets.

 - Brian Walter

die lag

buite die grense van my kop
verby die bastion van my skedel
ander kant die filter van my vel
is 'n sosio-medies-politiese wêreld
met so baie verbeeldingsryke kaalgatkonings
so veel blinde aasvoël-en-heyna aanhangers
en altyd die waarheidsoekende harlekyne
wat meer sukses het as die yogis
om lug in mense se longe te kry
dit is nie geld wat die wêreld tans red nie
dit is die lag

 - Lara Kirsten

Breakers

“I so like that colour, there;
no there,” you say, and we both
seek the word to catch
that colour, that breaks through
in a wave of memory:
“Aquamarine!”

We call it together, and laugh
as the breakers of the tides
crash higher, higher
and we watch for a flash
of curling aquamarine

that shows hunched, as briefly
within the rounding, breaking water
as this moment,

fleeting and lovely with laughter.

 - Brian Walter

Boomkerk

    Eikeboom in die tuin van die Moederkerk, Stellenbosch

ek sit hier by my Boomkerk
die lig wat deur die nuutoopgevoude blare breek
is die geruite vensters wat alle goddelikheid vertaal
die knewel van 'n boomstam is
God se bobeen wat sonder swik of swig
sy goddelike staan staan
die juigende takke is die kerkbankies waarop
die voëls lofliedere tot die hemele sing
die wortels is die geloof wat in
onsigbaarheid die goddelikheid vasanker

o Boomgod, jou asem blaas die wêreld aan die lewe
jou groen mantel pomp kleur in ons anemiese siele
jou takke-prag ken geen argitektoniese perke
jy is milddadig in jou genade
en verrykend in
jou standvastige omarming

o Boomgod, wees my genadig
in die tye van my ongenade

 - Lara Kirsten

Old bird-table

When the hornbills come
– all floppy great birds of them –
we see ourselves

in their rag-tag ways:

cautious on the wire
fixing all with drooping eye,
he peers down his nose;

she comes then, edging
close, her want of fruit or bread
dances with her fear.

They feed at table,
then repair to the tree top,
sunnily chatter,

hemming and hawing,
each bird through a nose-long beak.
We watch ourselves there,

and we eye each other, too.

 - Brian Walter

On her eggs laughter    

I push you
in your wheelchair
to the open kitchen door
to catch some sun.

The dove burbles
(deep and sweet the sound
you complain is boring)
unruffling my own feathers
after the difficulties
of the morning – the cries
of pain, the wet sheets,
the stains of sadness,
which won't wash out.

"She sounds as if
she's sitting on eggs,"
I remark, "certainly those
are the sounds I'd make,
if I had eggs to sit on."

You burst
into the loudest, boldest laughter
I've yet heard from you
since you were 'struck'
(the word you've used
to describe your bad luck).

"Good that you don't,"
you observe – with that stubborn refusal
to imagine any self
in any situation other than
their own.

But the contented gurgle
of the dove, combining with
my whimsy of words
did have you erupt –

there's joy
in your heart
that will yet out

– despite all fuck-ups.

– Silke Heiss

Invisible

I iron the dress
of the old doll.
The blue dress
of the blue-eyed doll.
The well-made dress
of the antique doll,
with blush fired
perfectly into porcelain cheeks,
and porcelain little teeth,
and a dimple
in the porcelain mound of fat
on her chin.

Her body is of leather,
torn, repaired with tough fabric of sorts.
There is much stitching all over.
My mother, grandmother and great-grandmother
– all touched the doll.
All made well-made things
with deft fingers.
My grandmother sewed the dress,
the tiny button-holes,
which have had tiny buttons
pushed through them
for three generations now.

I think the doll sees
the invisible linking
of deft fingers,
transparent intentions
running like time, like water,
through the world.

Her eyes can close,
but the lids
are a little chipped,
so she probably peeps
even when you lay her down
to sleep.

– Silke Heiss

Winter poem

The ceiling fan – an unmoving X.
Obedient curtain folds hang down.
The daughter’s in the Blue Room.

– Silke Heiss

The clan you called

They are, to us in Poortjies, high specks.

“Come, come to us,” you say,
and they do, they come:
planing down, closer, towards us, open

raspberry-coloured underarms,
black extremities of wing,
they land and compose
themselves on the water,
each one facing the sun.

The whole clan of them face
the sun, and the sun
faces them: sets into
their heads bowed
upon the last light
on the water.

Swanlike, with grey youngsters, they swim-tread,
long-necked, white, but pink in parts, dipping their faces down,
occasionally below the high tide water, which is deeply, steely blue.

The flamingoes drift away from our talk. The clan you called,
their bright rose underarms, their hairpin necks and throats will sleep
soon, we suppose, on the lagoon, under the bright, full moon.

– Silke Heiss

play

understated undulations
radiating from fingers
ululating soft shadows
over
the claviature

the blade of her soul

she knows her tongue is the sheath
for the blade of her soul
one day a blade of grass
the next a blade of knife

for once she writes away
her feeling of inadequacy
and for a fleeting moment
believes in her capability
to nourish deeply and to cut finely

 - Lara Kirsten

Answer to Larkin

Children carry parents’ tears,
the yokes of their mistakes –
they saunter wryly through the years
and make their jokes.

– Silke Heiss


Sunrise

A quiet seagull couple
– floating in a flood
of light –
dipping heads, nipping
struggling, feelery things,
nodding necks, to get them down.

Cold feet (not theirs)
on the sand, in the blood
of this moment.

– Silke Heiss

Etymology

I work at words, but also watch
the Cape robin perch aslant the dry stem
of the wild dagga plant this autumn:

yesterday in Addo the Karoo shrub robin
fanned a white tipped tail as she dipped
down into the under-branches of dry brush.

Me, I word-watch, wish I had a Roberts
of poetry for this flitting in my scrub-mind.

- Brian Walter

word ek 'n groot seilskip

wanneer ek met jou liefde maak
rys my lyf op uit die harde hoekigheid van die bed
en word ek 'n groot seilskip
my sternum en ribbes waai oop
en bol soos groot wit seile
jy sprei soet en silwer al om my dye
soos die Atlantiese waters met sonsopkoms
my arms en hande is die mas wat in
die fluweel winde van jou liefde
ferm en swierig hoër en hoër uitstyg
en die son van jou oë
duik soos dolfyne in die golwe van my plesier

 - Lara Kirsten

The old ferry

A slop of water rocks the ferry,
that lifts, and drops a little; while
up the muddy sand the wavelets run.
I am looking for the ferryman

till he comes out from somewhere,
and is suddenly present;
and we silently make a deal,
for the ferryman is quiet and firm,

deliberate in his working.
He has a waterman’s job to do,
and I am it. He gets us going:
he’s not given, I presume, to talk,

so I give myself to the crossing,
to the water and the while,
and the rocking wave-borne boat,
and try to forget the bank I’ve left,

and the darker bank to come.
I peer deep into moving mists,
or down at my restless hands,
or at the bow, at the wake we leave.

The ferryman works the wooden oars,
his back sculls us across dark water,
his eyes – drawn back by his neck – look
back alert, but never snag my face.

The space between us is the space
of all that ever happens, and all
that ever will be. And he doesn’t allow
that gap to close, nor ever looks at me.

 - Brian Walter

Proliferation

In the garage, a plant
with bulbous roots and a cascade
of dark green, shiny leaves.
Beside it, a wandering ivy,
with rows and clusters
of heart-shaped leaves,
a diaspora of flags 
nesting on the ledges
of stacked boxes and a makeshift table.

Both plant and ivy
nurture and reward his fidelity –
his weekly acts of care towards them,
with the leafy proliferation
of their green selves.
Their thirst for water, for sunlight slanted
through blinds, is not unlike his own.
Their desire to reach ever further
into the air which surrounds them,
never fails to remind him
that despite change and decay,
he still wants to thrive.

 - Eduard Burle

digterlike spelonk

ek staan in die Sparerib-grot in die Bannerman's pas
in die Drakensberge
die magtige opening in die sandsteen-flanke
laat my eie mond oophang

die blootstellende omhulling
van die gapende aarde
die kille omhelsing van die nat verkalkte klipwande
gee my 'n tydelike sin van behoort

ek wil nie veel in die lewe hê nie
slegs 'n digterlike spelonk
tussen my twee wange
waarin die verse drup drup drup
en bly eggo met die valleie af

 

 - Lara Kirsten

Exit door

– for DM

Why, for you, an exit door
beckoned more insistently
than the call of the days ahead?

   *

Those moments you dreamed your future;
those moments you were drowning at sea.

   *

Notes, chords and melodies
missing from a musical score;
the unrecorded stories.

 - Eduard Burle 

Traditional

As I don’t walk out
this lockdown morning,
and see no fields and pastures green,
and find no maiden long lamenting
underneath yon willow tree.

I stay indoors
and I tell my cell-phone
about my hard recurring dream,
about the woman who is absent
and not weeping at the stream;

how things have turned
all topsy-turvy,
where what happens doesn’t now,
and folk who do things by tradition,
like the farmer, didn’t plough;

where the woman
who’s become a doctor
and heals the sick with holy hands,
texted me once and cursed her longing,
and sat her down in desert sands.

And still indoors
this lockdown evening
I weep for greed and pride, and tenders green,
and dream me of lass lamenting
underneath yon fever trees.

 - Brian Walter