Monday, June 29, 2015

            Mother Africa

 Africa is a strange place:

when the long winter that blew from Pretoria thawed
there was a stand of  Schotia afra
 – the finest I know –
that flowered, every tree,
summer and winter:
clusters of red tangled among curled pods all that year
like some Golden Age
– fruit and flower always together
as I’ve never known them,

 as if the earth were rejoicing;

 but then, in English the tree’s the karoo boer-bean;
 and in that season when the heirs of men who took horse agin Kitchener
 saw the last dream of the Boer Republics
 melt like mist

 the trees wept blood,
 strewed beans kommandos once foraged in fugitive hunger
 like manna:

 Africa has a heart that knows us all
 – despite everything.    

 - Norman Morrissey

Thursday, June 25, 2015

 rivier en son

soos rivierstrome moeiteloos
oor klip stroom
stroom die frases van musiek deur
die ravyne van tyd
kalwe dit my siel uit in
diep holtes waarin
die melodieë soos helder waterpoele blink

as die musiek nie speel nie
is dit soos droogte
en kan die dorre rivierbeddings nie meer wag
vir die feesvierende frases
om uit die wolke te breek
en die honger holtes van ons ore
te verkwik met salwende harmonieë

suiwer suiwer suiwer mag ons siele bly
in die versuiwerende klank van musiek
die klank kolk oor my
en soos ‘n bedrewe toornaar
trek hy my siel van binne na buite
en voel ek hoe die musiek soos die son
seëninge oor my lyf uitspreek

- Lara Kirsten

Saturday, June 20, 2015

Our Home
                  
Each day,
our home settles down
to the nest it's making

out under the far-flung
star-hung
immensities

as the mountains breathe
on the deodars
and the house-lights

glimmer
like a glow-worm
in a meadow.

 - Norman Morrissey

Saturday, June 13, 2015

ek draai in sirkels met oë wa-wyd oop

ek draai in sirkels met oë wa-wyd oop
totdat ek kind-naar word
ek wil oefen om al die objekte in die draai-kolk
met sekuurheid raak te kan eien
ek sien 'n wit-glans boud met poësie opgeskryf
 - iewers het neruda ook 'n sê gehad - 
die jong seun kyk af met 'n afstandelikheid na 
die groen artisjokke
onder my gryp die weefsels van die mat 
my stewig aan die sole
hy vermoed ek gaan heel waarskynlik binnekort omtiep
in duiseligheid
maar ek kan nie ophou draai en kyk
dit is grasdakke en houtpale wat elke keer teen
ander hoeke in my oog val
en dan is daar die sagte kopkussings
en die blink kasdeure
wat soos halva en kakao-poeier inmekaar smelt
my ooglede wil nou swaar toeval
maar ek hou aan
asof ek die marathon hardloop
en beide die grieke en romeine wil oortref in prestasie

 - Lara Kirsten

Monday, June 8, 2015

            Lord of Life
                        (For Harry Owen)

There was an old White rhino bull
who'd lived for years in a huge boma
where I'd go

to sit and write
– back to a fence-post;
and one day

I felt this vast breath on my neck
and a head like a wheelbarrow
ducked between the old elevator cables of the fence,

nudged my shoulder.
So I sat
– scared to break the spell –

while he rested his horn-crowned head
beside me,
fine, furrowed, crepe-like skin

laid
companionably
against my bare arm.

I held my breath,
but he felt – as they do at peace –
so like a great horse

I ventured a hand up
to touch his restful ears,
tickled them gently

so he canted towards me
and closed his eyes
in bliss.

It became a ritual,
whenever I was around in the Reserve
we'd visit,

he'd come when I'd settled to my notebook
and we'd share our warm blood
in simple liking to be together, I guess:

I read him more than one
fledging  poem
– and his quiet gravity saved me, I'm sure

many a vanity or vagueness of phrase,
he silently mentored me
for more than a year

with his antiquity of idiom
and gigantic,
seasoned gentleness.

I moved on, he must be dead now;
but his calm, alert being at my elbow
often has haunted me,

stood pondering at my shoulder as I've written
(like Chaucer or Shakespeare or Yeats
will do)

– shaming all silliness out of me.
I am most lucky:
I could take my chance

with one
of the lords
of life.   

 -  Norman Morrissey

Friday, June 5, 2015

Cefani

I come away knowing
the calls of Pied Kingfishers
and Great White Heron.

21st May 2015

 - Silke Heiss

Thursday, June 4, 2015

die ambisie van die gedig is so indringerig
dit laat my nie toe om oor te
gee aan ‘n sukkelary nie
so waaragtige astrante houding
het hierdie woordkuns!
ek probeer my skaar met
‘n hardvogtigheid
probeer ander kant toe kyk
maar nee! die kleine lettertjies
kom sit met alle mag
so grieselig in my kop
en kom lek hier by my vingers uit

 - Lara Kirsten

Tuesday, June 2, 2015

It Is Music

The poet may not
visit her son
at his house,

because
she is
the ex-wife.

Two hours’ drive away
she has to live. No job. No money.
She must make her own arrangements.

Old family friends
offer her their daughter’s bed.
Amélie’s sleeping out tonight

and of course Kai can come
for supper.
The poet makes pizza for all.

A host of little ones
look on
the kneading, knocking down and rolling,

their questions climbing,
reaching, their declarations
sharing, all their funny voices

building
space
she’s lost,

been denied without a choice.
‘You’re not a part of the family.’
To be cast out –

there’s nothing worse
for a maternal creature.
Kai’s voice threads into the fabric

his low pitch she knows
beneath the children, and the older son,
with whom he’s playing at the screen,

and the char’s toddler Ouinene
has so much with raised eyebrows to say
and says it, incomprehensibly, gesturing firmly.

The friend, mother Ilse, sighs –
‘All this noise. I don’t know where
my thoughts begin and end.’

‘That’s what I long for,’ says the poet,
‘in the silence I have been condemned to;
although I know you’ve sometimes too much din.’

‘We don’t appreciate our blessings,’
replies Ilse, laughing, thinking.
The women’s voices run

slowly between those of their sons
and the children
and

it
is
music.

16th May 2015

 - Silke Heiss