wanneer ek dans 

wanneer ek dans 

glip my siel uit my tone
en word so sigbaar en tasbaar
soos 'n ver-rykende boom

kom staan onder my arms
se skarnierende skaduwees

die toorkrag begin't vonk
die winde pirouette
hulle warm poele
oor my wange en kuite

my dansende lyf is
rinkinkende ligkolle
wat geruisloos deur
die strak gesig van die straat kolk

- Lara Kirsten

Training ground

Walking, pausing, half-jogging
up Corridor Ravine;

Or, on some days,
running in the early morning dark,
street lamps and the breathing sea his companions
as he follows a route he’s devised
up through the roads of a suburb;

It is here that he finds
what helps him survive;
it is here that he starts over –
a beginner, once more,
in the training ground for the mind.

 - Eduard Burle

vir breyten

die leemte wat jy los
breek die hart
soos 'n swael-seisoen
wat nooit
ooit
weer sy draai
oor die a a r d b o l
gaan gooi nie

 - Lara Kirsten

Hearing Tatamkhulu Afrika

I don’t hear much, these days,
about a poet I thought to be
one of our best:

I heard him read once,
in the old literary museum building
of quaint spaces, and topsy turvy staircases,
with stacks of books, and an old studious feel.

He stood, old man with thin shanks,
with the kindest face, and read
in his humility,

and wept when reading
of an old comrade dead,

wept as the lines, the words,
stuttered the memory,
choked with grief in the vowels.

He’d withdrawn into the chameleon
of racelessness, becoming all races,
and none, with knowing-naivety.

I wished I were as he’d become.

Humanitarian. Activist. Poet.
And I heard him read. Once.

 - Brian Walter