Blue sky over Barcelona

The first thing you see
on ascending the stairs leading out of the metro
is the blue sky over Barcelona –

sky that is rinsed in the dark blue face
of the sea, sky that touches
the sleeping branches of trees, the coloured spirals
of the Sagrada Familia.

Your heart is hungry, in search of a dream,
your heart is weary, emptied of dreams.

Sun today, that finds your skin,
pours its radiance over the city.

This voice that is yours, that is
someone else’s
(someone you’re yet to be, are becoming).

Whatever it is you’re looking for
isn’t to be found here,

but for now you are here, and for now
nothing is clear except for
the blue sky over Barcelona.

 - Eduard Burle

New moon night

A chosen man’s breath
on my arm,
frogs and cicadas quiet.

- Silke Heiss, 30 January 2025


Sunshine poem
For Ed and Jacques

Little, legless braai-stand-not,
seated on broken bricks,
weighted with drizzle-infused ash,

beside a blue wheelbarrow
filling up with water,
while waiting for the sunshine
of its very own poem.

 - Silke Heiss, 19 December 2024

ag nee, geitjies sterf ook

ek maak my venster oop

en op die vensterbank val
'n piepklein geitjie
                            gekwes

hy het seker in 'n gleufie skuiling gevind
en toe ek hierdie oomblik kies
om die venster oop te maak
                             knyp
die raam deur
sy dun lyfie
etlike lewenstrillings flits deur sy selle
en skielik net so stil
net so
                            dood

sy lyfie so weerloos en klein
my skrik so bitter en groot
alle klammigheid in my mond verdwyn
my oë dartel wild oor die kortstondige lewensboog
waarin hierdie brose wesentjie in
hierdie klein hoekie
van die aardbol gestraal het

'n halfuur later kom ek terug
om seker te maak die geitjie is nog daar
en dalk wonderbaarlik weer opgestaan het

                          maar nee
'n hele spul reuse miere
oortrek sy lyfie en
                         verlustig
hulself aan alles wat
hom eens laat beweeg het

die skok trek my platter
hoe gou so polsende kleinood
                         oplos tot in
die onpolsende
                         niet

 - Lara Kirsten

Stone-people prayer

Two rocks, in reverence,
eyes closed, necks bowed,
fists held close in prayer,
facing golden sand,
the long evening rays flocking
towards their lack of feet,
their statued selves,
stuck here,
solid in their thanks.

 -  Silke Heiss, 20 January 2025

stil lewe

ek het weer so siek geword in my longe

slapelose nagte
verstarde en moeë dae
bolyf en borskas so seer

vandag so laagtepunt bereik
geen fisieke of kop krag

ek sien niks veel raak nie
ek is in so sieke dwaal
dit wat ek wel sien lyk faal

      maar
daar was
een     enkele
objek
wat my aandag verwonderd vasgehou het:

'n leë
consol
glas pot

die manier hoe sy net daar so     geruisloos
in die oggendlig staan en      blink in
haar glassigste glassigheid

ek sit op die vloer en bly kyk en kyk na haar
'n eenvoudige glas pot

ek hoef nie eens aan haar te vat nie
sy is werkliker as werklik
meer betroubaar as my hart en my kop
sy die hoopvolste stil lewe in
my bestaan vandag

die poëtiese misterie:
hoe verruk ek staan teenoor
hierdie
     harde
         helder
              deursigtige
passieloosheid van glas

 - Lara Kirsten

Mentoring
for Nasru-Dee

The great trees at the bottom of his garden,
sentinels of these seminal hours,
rooting a human soul into community
by means of letters sounding out
alphabets far, far beyond Babel.

The only towers here are the pine,
the poplar, the spruce, planted for love of shade,
thriving in a vale where the decades raised them
to stand tall.

They talk, crawl, with all the time in the world
through the cadences of a love poem,
add words slowly, change them around,
insert the musical notation of punctuation,

and he drinks the mystic tuition
he’s effortlessly drawing out of her,
while she floats in an element so watery and airy,
so near the happy sun, yet barefoot on the earth,
she hardly recognises herself,
the sureness of her voice,
as if it’s always been here, this oneness,
meditating and conceiving
an evergreen sap of being

here, here where their voices mingle with their thoughts,
shared for now, and always,
bringing forth his art
by a magical midwifery
that leaves them both
reverent and humbled.

Silke Heiss, 18 January 2025

in sy oë

        dit is koud vanaand in kaapstad 

die bedelaar soek 'n stuk warmte in
sy kartonbed
sy mond is hard soos
die betonmure
wat oral
om
hom
oprys
maar in sy oë
sien ek iets van sy siel skyn soos
'n perdeblom wat
deur
die krake
breek

in his eyes

        it is cold this night in cape town
the beggar hungers for a piece of warmth
in his cardboard bed
his mouth is hard like
the concrete walls
that
rises
all
around
him
but in his eyes
i see something of his soul shine out
like a dandelion
breaking
through
the cracks

 - Lara Kirsten

Step to the bridge

You step to the bridge
to say good-bye to the
Drakensberg lily in flower.

One bloom’s wilted on the cluster,
four are open to the sun,
four buds still nestling.
Their fullness I’ll likely not see,
as they’ll probably be done on my return.

I turn to go, when suddenly a body
of fragrance
circles my face, anointing
my awareness. I stop,
step down, obedient, from the planks
into the leaf-mould, soft, dark soil
and put my nose between
the white stamens dancing
in the rosy trumpet
of petals. Inhale and hear
in the odour the sweetness of a language
I’m given to compose
in this moment reaching over
between two species, lines that arc
from lily heart to human heart,
one beating, both brimming
with living relatedness.

 - Silke Heiss, 14 January 2025

Extracts from a runner’s notebook ii

i.

A runner and his shadow
move through the forest;

he is each slender tree
which remains rooted
in the earth;

he is each loosened leaf
which, in readiness,
falls to the ground.

   ii.

In the great lung of the forest,
a man is running.

In the silence, when light
filters down through the trees
like smoke,

he can breathe, feel as one.

In the vast maze of the forest
a man feels the ground
beneath his feet,

the texture of the ground
with nothing intervening,

knows he cannot escape
from the earth where he runs.

   iii.

He is running uphill
into the arms of the breeze,
he is running to reel in the miles,
he is running to keep feeling
what there still is to feel.

- Eduard Burle

Lusikisiki Lear

Once, driving to Lusikisiki from Port St John’s
we swept over a hill, and in the road there
lay a human, brown-naked, legs straight out,
arms down the side, head against the tar,
chin to the heavens: dignified, and bare,
placed along the centre white-line.
Christ, you called, seeing as we passed
the woman, old and thin and stiff, like death.
Leave her, she’s mad: always does such things,
our isi-Xhosa companion said. But her form
was so fine, humanly, evocative, an image
of our deep core human self that we clothe off,
socialize away, philosophize out: and yet,
with her humble media of body and self,
she had the instinct — or deep talent, rather —
for installation art, some mirror demand
for self-reflection, an awareness of each itinerant
spectator: a shrewd sense of our common drama.

 - Brian Walter

Four short poems 

   i.

Words and idioms –
stones skimmed across
the lake of the mind.

   ii.

His mind, like a gazelle,
leaps nimbly between ideas.

   iii.

He returns to what will outlast him:

the shadowed outline
of a mountain;

the surf’s insistent refrain;

the stars bedded in their dark quilt
above the Atlantic.

   iv.

He is drawn to the idea of the beloved.
That day – if it comes –
when the pull of such a notion
becomes more than an idea.

- Eduard Burle

Save

The moon’s turned golden
as she’s climbed higher,
above the pounding of the waves.

The palms are still,
no breath moves,
save that of my pen,
whispering over the page.

– Silke Heiss, 22nd May 2024

Lunar

Darkening in the dark
of pine trees –
twilight.

   *

Moon, tonight you are
a sliver, a rind
of all my yesterdays.

Moon, my life sometimes loses
its shape.

   *

Boat-shaped moon
above the dark water
where do we sail tonight?

   *

Glide by, silent moon,
glimpsed through windscreen and dark trees.
You lead, I’ll follow.

- Eduard Burle

Desire

Desire to walk into the sea again, and wash clean the wounds of his mind.
Desire to learn how to listen for each fifth wave, until he grows still and forgets himself.
Desire to somersault into those waves, until the laughter rings from his belly.
Desire to dance, on beaches at dawn and under bright lights among strangers.
Desire to dance in one place, holding empty arms out in front of him.
Desire to learn to trust silence again, when there is no music at all.
Desire for the faith that life flows strong and clear through him, whether in the arms of someone or alone.

 - Jacques Coetzee

Riddle

What colour
is the crone’s womb?
Luminous milky turquoise it is,
and smooth as silk. A bag full
of magic, under her used-up
udder.

– Silke Heiss, 30th June 2024

Notes from a forest

Lichen inching its way
up the trunk of a pine tree –
the distance, unknown,
of the journey ahead.

   *

Silence –
the forest’s soundtrack
to growth and decay.

   *

Fallen leaves –
the compositions of trees.

   *

Rotting tree trunk –
food and accommodation
for a burgeoning termite population.

   *

Small bird on the wing,
minstrel of the morning –
will you return to lend your song
to that chorus, at dusk,
among the darkening branches?

- Eduard Burle

Toffee ice cream

This is to say that, when
I congratulated you the other day
for being vigilant about your intake of sugar,
I really meant it.

But for me we will probably always be
in that ice cream parlour, in a much too quiet suburb
in the days before my divorce.

I remember the flow of conversation—
all those new intimacies finding speech—
but mostly I remember the moment when
that rich, cold, clotted sweetness
insisted on spilling over the edge
of the bowl, until I lifted it
to my hungry mouth, and we both laughed,
signalling we were fine, still knew who we were.

As a child, the important thing about eating
was keeping my hands clean, or washing them
as soon as possible if all else failed.

Now here I was, my hands already sticky
with recent failure, bringing this bowl
of unearned sweetness closer to me,
to swallow one more bite
of this incorrigible,
mind-numbingly beautiful world,
and then another.

 - Jacques Coetzee

Benguela

for Alex Bozas, Brydon Bolton & Ross Campbell of Benguela

i.

Molten trio
tears at, peels back
the sky –

we fly through
black holes,

watch stars realign
and comets collide –

light and dark
ripple and bend,

come along for
the ride.

ii.

This music burns
and shudders into darkness –
its spirit
is deathless.

- Eduard Burle

  

Womb of time

New moon velvet hugs the old woman’s skin.
The night is sufficiently warm: naked she glides

her form knows where the furniture is

through luscious darkness.

The soles of her feet track
the edges of mats, carpet, wood,
to the loo, and back to bed

like a seed of desire

conversing with the hidden moon.

Her own mind and body are in hiding
from harsh humanity, who habitually blot,
delete the night with brute power.

How can they see a poem?
How deeply, darkly it is planted, by the moon,
into the very womb
of time.

– Silke Heiss 9th May 2024

Aniseed rusks

Oh, that sweet spiciness,
suggesting a loving, orderly house
centred in its kitchen.

Good on a plate, yes, but always
best taken from a loved hand—
the trusted hand of someone who loves you
without conditions.

I can still taste the brittleness of them:
the way they melt in the mouth, unlike anything else
I’ve ever tasted;
that spiciness, until you can believe
that the whole world might be edible after all.

That fragrance, that taste still takes me back
to the stoep of the holiday house in Margate
that was ours for such a short time, when I was eleven or twelve.
Those treats made by a very favourite aunt

before the family was broken, before I’d seen
through to the terrible fear of the other,
the blind prejudice against so much
barred from the kitchen, against those
not offered a seat at the family table.

 - Jacques Coetzee