Lynx

Your gaze briefly met mine
and told you all
you needed to know.

Our encounter
was fortuitous, unexpected; you
went your way
as I continued jogging
along a man-made path.

May there always be
a hunter such as you,
nosing the wind, senses attuned
to earth and sky

between setting sun
and rising moon,
between mountain crags
and the repeating waves
far below.

 - Eduard Burle

Stress

The solid soul of my disease
seeps into my body, into muscle tautness,

like slow sap in the dry and twisted stems
of wild olives trees in the old Karoo,

till I can scream. I live in silence,
trying to hold it in, surviving

on the breaking edge, wondering
if I should stop working, quit caring.

Or maybe I’ll let the pain wash over

like the Wilgerboom River this spring,
flowing through the dry Karoo
over slate that has been sun-heated
for seasons,

relaxing now into river-being.

 - Brian Walter

Poetry zoom meeting

Tonight my eye overpowers my ear –
the poets' words are smudged
by low bandwidth on my side, but:
the physics of their faces brings out more
than would occur to them to compose!

Eye-shadow, on a poetess's eyelids,
shimmers omniscient lilac,
bewitching my gaze –
the geometry of her eyebrows
is clear, a directive to me
as regards poetry: foreheads shine
their light. One elderly gentleman
carries a cup of skin
at his throat, filled
with magical warblings.
And see the nostrils
of another: fiercely sculpted,
so the asymmetries of truth
can be inhaled truly.
Another's unevenly opening mouth
tells his spirit's wryness,
cautiously trusting, that generous utterance
shall be brought forth
on the tray of a careful, confident tongue.

The reading ends,
what I've been served turns, abruptly, black,
and all disappears
back into the unseen.

– Silke Heiss

soms

soms, tog soms

kry ek nog so oomblik van verruklike oorstelp
waar my nek en keel uitspan met
'n vlietende uitbundigheid
vanoggend was so vlietende somse oomblik -
toe voel dit asof al my voorouers en al die kunstenaars
hier deur my keelbande wil losbreek

ja soms, tog soms
word ek oortref met iets groters as ekself

en dan draai ek om
en trap ek weer in my bekende lara-spoor

maar iets bly gloei in my nekspiere
iets helder bly agter

 - Lara Kirsten

Children and the winter sun
       for Anastacia

Down from home to the township
to pick you up – young woman,

with life budding in your body –
in the rough end of town
where drug lords wink and kids get shot.

We drive out west, towards the Cape,
but duck inland, north towards the hills,
into the low Eastern Cape bushveld
and euphorbia valleys, into farmland –

all the way, so we can write,
can write our truck-beaten roads

from our now, back till the was
and out the Eastern Cape, till whenever.

 - Brian Walter