Naartjie

No, I can’t write a poem to praise you.

I’ve made wines from many kinds of fruit,

from marrows and new oak leaves, for goodness’ sake;

and they carried the spirit and soul

that was theirs alone;

and for all the promise

of the coat you’re delivered in,

-so lush and royal, so gift-wrapped

(that you slip out of too easily,

like a soft, pale girl)

-you don’t deliver, do you?

Not really.

You’re tinctured spring-water

with citrus notes:

delicate, floral,

but no real body:

no tannins, no lasting food

for soul, or palate, or our own red hearts.

You can’t compete against

the blood orange,

                     ruby grapefruit,

 holy apple,

                     noble grape.

You looked sweeter with your clothes on.

Maybe your sweetest self

would appear in a liqueur?  

 -  John van Wyngaard

She Dreams

The soul comes to consciousness in a great

cavern of space; a column

at her back, knobbed and ridged, all the way up.

Horizontal ledges left and right, like scaffolding, leading up.

Above, to left and right, two dim tunnels

leading off. And below her, two more, moving downwards.

And she is sitting here, in this cool silence, and looks to see

what she is. Naked and little.

A foundling in a cave,

back up against the column, looking up, and around.

She’s agile enough to scramble everywhere-along the jointed tunnels,

in all four directions, to their very endings, even,

where her world ends. She learns

how to wriggle into even these terminal places,

where she can feel something of everything that is beyond her;

touch some of its movings, ponder its messages.

The frail light she wanders in must come from somewhere above;

so up the scaffolding. Then this vertical shaft,

this stem, into a smooth gourd, a round hollow,

gleaming like the inside of a pearl.

And with windows!

Warm stuff, full of light, flooding in, which sets her

quivering like a tuning fork-

and her world shivers into being, too.

 - John van Wyngaard