Then

Luminous lilac and indigo
jellyfish
stud the misty shore;

a lone, bent walker
sinks steps
through the pristine sand,

stops, extracts
from a sling-bag
pen and notebook.

Black oystercatchers let her,
then,
much closer than before.

– Silke Heiss, 18th January 2022

your voice

your voice rustles
through my soul
like the homeward flight
of a flock of sacred ibis

murmuration

when you kiss me
a murmuration of swallows
break through
the summer skies
of
your mouth

 - Lara Kirsten

Man at the market

I saw a man
at the market –
he put me in mind
of a future you,
filled me with strange
focus, like desire,
and my eyes
followed him.

He had, like you,
a slight monk's patch,
was worn by years,
yet strong, his frame lean,
his arms and feet bare.

He moved with an appealing pride,
born of fearlessness
I caught a whiff of,
and he smelt familiar.

His head, like yours,
a little heavy on the body,
yet held high in lion style,
albeit the 'mane' (just like yours)
was not lush, but fine-haired:
no coarseness there.

When I first laid eyes on you,
three years ago, in a queue,
you were smiling
at a cashier in the Foodzone,
a little ducked, or shy,
and my pre-mother, pre-wife past
flooded back all at once,
in a rush.

The man at the market
reminded me of a future you –
a male counterpart, perhaps,
to what I am becoming?

Simple and bejewelled
and magnetising, wild,
composed
and free.

– Silke Heiss, 17th January 2022

In the orthopaedic ward

I brought so much here with me today,
so much I wanted to put down
as I walked into this hospital to find you:

the invisible wounds I carried,
and the way I’d invested in them
in order to be right about something, anything;

whatever I know about negotiating
for power or leverage;
the necessary ways of listening suspiciously
I learned from Marx and Freud and Nietzsche
and their beautiful, high-minded children;

the swaggering confidence that comes
from being the new thing, the bright, beautiful stranger
with the golden key that can unlock the castle –
that, that most of all.

Ah, but you know as well as I do
that you can’t put down your past or your learning –
can’t put down anything much at all.
And even so, I walked into that room
feeling lighter, estranged from my voice;
strange enough not to know
what to say, how to hold you.

And all I remember clearly of that visit
is the astonishment I felt –
my one hand gently holding your bionic knee,
softly humming a James Brown fragment to you –
slightly breathless, slightly out of tune:
“I feel good,
and I knew that I would.”

 - Jacques Coetzee

A basket of love poems

In the spirit of Valentine's day, Ecca Poet Silke Heiss collected a variety of love poems from the Ecca Poets. Herewith the selection.

Catch him

As the mists at last clear,

a robin comes to the troughed aloe leaves

to drink.

 

You can’t see him from your seat

– splashing, sipping, flipping away –

so I write this poem

 

to catch him

for

you.

 

– Norman Morrissey

 

(published in To the Far Horizon, Hogsback: 2015) 

 

Namibia

 

Pitched camp. And the mopani bush is quiet;

the evening still, the clouds adrift –

the first clouds we have seen these two weeks.

You have taken the kids out to see the cheetah

at the research centre: some breeding project

for an endangered species. I sit amongst our things,

with day’s heat setting in the west,

a Windhoek beer a-downing for my thirst:

I’ve worked up quite a heat, pitching the tent,

in this desert land, spreading our sleeping gear,

laying out a meal, for you and the boys. 

Ah, my love, you are encamped in the fenced

wilderness of my heart. Our place is made. 

Come home now, and rest. Love is such a rare,

endangered beast, we must deliberately protect,

so that coming generations may know.

 

– Brian Walter

 

(published in Brood, Ecca Poets, Hogsback: 2010)

 

For Clara, 19 months

Language is an envelope:

inside it you might find

a tiger, a dragonfly,

or a smooth river pebble.

 

By now

your own naming of the world

is gathering pace like a river . . .

 

Just when the sound of the words

“Mond” and “Sterne”*

became, for you, moon and stars,

I do not know,

 

but there is wonder

in your eyes and your face

as you look to the sky and say

“Mond”, “Sterne”.

 

You are the bright star

in my universe,

and a moon, too, often in flux.

 

Together with your mother

we form a triangle, a clan,

a constellation.

 

In the years to come,

whatever they will bring,

may your light keep reaching me

just as it does now.

 

– Ed Burle

 

(published in What It Is, Ecca Poets, Plettenberg Bay: 2020)

__________

*“Mond” and “Sterne” should be heard according to their German pronounciation, i.e. ‘mawnd’ and ‘shtahne’ (‘a’ as in ‘glad’)

 

Each day its reverence

Waking

into my consciousness,

gradually re-kindling my flame,

 

I want to press

my forehead

against your shoulder –

 

innoculate

by touch of pulse

your tissue, vapour, fragrance

against whatever dangers.

 

Ah, Love, let us protect each other

from those moments in our selves

that do not sing –

 

let tender touch of skin on skin

to each day

its reverence bring.

 

– Silke Heiss

 

(published in Greater Matter, Poetree Publications, Johannesburg: 2019)

 

jou borskas

        vir Kim

 

jou borskas is die perfekte houvas
soos 'n warm rotswand waarteen ek hoër en hoër uitklim

my hart spring met 'n swier uit my ribbes
en kom lê polsend teen jou bors

jou sternum smelt weg
my hart skop nes teen joune

in rooi, nat ekstase 

 

– Lara Kirsten

 

(published in Alles is Anders, Ecca Poets, Knysna: 2021)

 

Caving

 

There is music

in the way you say my name

 

sounds of Coldplay

ringing in the air

reminiscing your hands up my shirt

bent over literature,

philosophy

and cups of cold coffee

in our cave

 

Where our bodies share secrets

and our minds made love

to childhood foes

and grown up dreams,

not knowing

if tomorrow holds enough books

to keep our story alive.

 

– Alvené Appollis-du Plessis

 

Love Fury

 

Today the world is coming through the walls again –

through our computer speakers, declaring

that doom is imminent, insisting

that we are turning the earth into a fire –

 

just like the one I used to imagine, burning

on and on into eternity

when I was a Protestant boy.

 

Today it came to me: what if

that vision was accurate? Maybe I’ll find myself

one of these days, in a long line

headed for extreme weather. I don’t know.

 

All I have to exchange with you,

to set down here against the likelihood

of apocalypse as night falls,

is this clear image: the two of us

standing side by side

this day six years ago,

when we promised to surrender

to a different, slower burning,

to offer ourselves up to a different fire.

 

So I’ll be on board when they say

we must cut down on emissions.

When they ask us to leave smaller footprints

of carbon on the earth, I’ll sign up,

or at least sign the petition.

But there’s a secret, sustaining

fire I keep close to me,

guarding an inner space science has not named;

and I guard it every day so it doesn’t collapse,

so the world won’t keep growing smaller inside my chest.

 

 Now, as opinions harden, as feeling

and thought are both blunted from misuse,

may I always carry with me

these traces of our fiery pilgrimage.

May something in me remember

how to be molten, to remain

hot and excessive, in tune

with things hidden under the earth;

willing to change my shape

to contain this old love fury

that makes and unmakes us every day.

 

– Jacques Coetzee

 

Green tomatoes

for Sheila

 

“… apart from that

the house remains the same

since you have gone. I suspect

the clock has stopped in sympathy

with silence, cars at night

on the Alice road, pass,

a distance slower.

I couldn’t find the bread-knife,

bought some rolls instead

(the shop lady said they

would keep forever if I freeze them).

The man from East London came

about upholstering,

I said we’d have to wait and see …

He left his card “in case”.

O’ Yes, I almost forgot, surprise, surprise!

I pulled the curtains back

to watch the rain, hey presto,

there they were, blushing in rows,

the green tomatoes

you left to ripen.

P.S.

When are you coming home?”

 

– Cathal Lagan

 

(published in Sandbird, Alice, Lovedale Press: 1999)

Heron poem trio

1 Two herons

On a dune –
a partnership of grace:
together and apart,
telling me something
about the simple truths
we face: me
and my heart.

2 Reach

Two herons and I –
three points on the beach –
watching, still,
and wondering.

The morning haze combines
our pondering,

the distance between us
a riddle
to reach.

3 Two herons

Needle-heads
on threads of neck,
bodies grey and blue,
weave me, on my walking feet,
back, to thoughts
of you.

– Silke Heiss, 22nd January 2022

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