Beside our table

The food was better

than I remembered, and

the ambience quieter than

anywhere else in Hogsback,

tonight, under the three-quarter moon,

overlooking the eager

wide hearth; overhearing

the family’s voices –

their chamber

of peace

beside our table.

– Silke Heiss, 11^th August 2019

The seed

I wanted to paint

the night sky for you, to bring it

into our house, to remind us

never to be small; never to forget

to trust the rhythms

that conceal the stars,

only to reveal them again the next night

whether we see them or not.

And instead I have brought you

this seed, which I painted

on a quiet afternoon, when it seemed

as if my juices

had shrivelled, and the tide

of my desire was going out for good.

Slowly I dipped a brush

into acrylic paint of different colours;

then an index finger only,

creating lines across the fine paper

as if I knew where I was going.

Let it be so, then: I bring you

the medicine of this small, dark seed

which came about in an instant

when I was listening for something else.

I think it whispers that something

will survive: some spark

from the great fire

that will burn on when you and I and it

have completed our last transformation.

 - Jacques Coetzee

Faith with himself

The frown
of concentration
on the car guard's brow

as he directs 
the metal herd
into and out of tight spaces –

his total focus
(whether or not there's a coin in his hand)
tells his mettle:

a man who builds,
holds faith with himself,
by working.

– Silke Heiss, 11th December 2019

Water lily

The lily on the water
is a castle –
crystal towers,
amethyst ablaze
with light.

– Silke Heiss, 16th December 2019

Lilies

They'd always bloomed black.
None came up the year you died.
None have budded since.

But – three summers down the line –
a fresh flower surprises
the year's last dawn –
in pink.

– Silke Heiss, 31st December 2019

vulpine

i want to write 
a vulpine poem
              that sneaks  
     into 
the darkest                     crevice 
      without 
being spotted
                        sniffs
                        at 
all the corners of
              delectable flesh
keeping silent and                         sneaky 
as much as its wild bristly hair will allow

i want to write 
a vulpine poem
that        treads           so            soft
that the only              trace that 
will be discerned
is its                   feral aroma 
clinging 
   to 
the 
   shadows

 - Lara Kirsten

In thrall

A terrace of tied-up umbrellas –
like girded nuns they billow
hoods and breasts and habits,
turning wildly:
underneath high palms, 
who lean back:

leaves, like scraggly hair a-flowing,
storeys of starlings blowing
to and away from
ragged stems –

as froth explodes from rocks
by the shore, and air
is filled
with gulls, who hazard all –

stubborn, white-black bodies
in thrall, before the rain starts pelting down.

– Silke Heiss, 19th January 2020

seëvier

ek sit in 'n vliegtuig

en net hier agter my sit 'n jong vrou

en gesels oor die trefkrag van die rymende koeplet

hierlangs my begin 'n swart man te klets oor 

die metafoor waaraan hy timmer en skaaf 

en waarmee hy eendag die wêreld gaan oorneem

voor my sit 'n gryskopman en bespiegel oor

die medisinale gebruike van sonette

en wat die beste manier is om dit in te kry - 

snuif, inspuit, sluk of rook?

oorkant die paadjie sit 'n Indiër man 

en wonder hardop (met sy oë toe) hoe sy ragas 

gaan klink in kombinasie met die resiteer van 'n handvol haiku

die lugwaardin loop verby met haar trollie

en bied aan 'n keuse tussen komplimentêre limerieke en odes

deur die luidsprekers breek die vlieënier se stem 

en in vrye vers besing hy die wondere van vlieg

slaap ek dalk? ek knyp myself aan die dy
want ek kan dit nie glo -
wat 'n digterlike vlug!

die volgende oomblik staan ek vrymoedig op

vokaliseer hardop my mees onlangse gedig
waai koebaai 
en spring uit die naaste nood-uitgang
 - sonder valskerm -

as die poësie so seëvier
dan sal ek verseker vanself ook kan vlieg

 - Lara Kirsten

It taught us vapour

Thick mist on the pass
taught us –

you can't see the road,
but it is there –

you can't see far, so
take it slow, around

the many bends. Truth, too,
is not straightforward,

is soft and secretive,
concealing what will be,

as vapour does,
on earth.

- Silke Heiss, 23rd January 2020

With the stones

This morning, in my dream, we sat

close together, near the smooth stones

you carried from Roundstone Beach

all those years ago.

I sat down there next to you as the sun rose

(though in truth you were still fast asleep

in the bed we share). And our hands moved

slowly over the stones, as if remembering

some ancient journey.

You told me once: if these

can become smooth and round and large like this,

knocking about in that cold Atlantic sea,

maybe we too could become less jagged,

less sharp-edged and brittle.

Ah, but now you are awake,

and the air around us

is suddenly crisp and urgent, and our thoughts turn

from the calm smoothness of stone

towards blood and skin. Today we give thanks

for the urgency of touch

that cannot wait; for all

our many rough edges: each scar, blemish and dent,

each sharp word that jolts us

into awareness of these late summer days,

turning already towards autumn—

and each particular leaf about to fall.

 - Jacques Coetzee

The black sky

And the black sky,

and the little house white-washed –

the light cuts like a square green interior

the window, with a woman looking out,

and outside, our side, a child

saunters past.

What do we need?

A boy, and a dog, on the grey pavement,

the night sky black

as if it is the outside of everything,

like the frame,

an unreachable beyond

not in the picture,

of it.

 - Brian Walter

List of numbers

I still keep their numbers

in the file labelled “telephone list”

on my slow computer:

one for the man who read back my half-formed poems to me

in a monotonous voice, daring me to throw them

away, until I slowly learned

to sing more softly, urgently;

one for the man who fed me olives and whiskey

though it must have been clear by then my being straight

was not just a passing phase after all;

one for the woman who gave me a sheaf of corn

because she didn’t know how to say goodbye;

one for the woman who fed me rare plants

and asked me politely, after I’d toasted her

with the umteenth song,

if I didn’t come with a pause button for God’s sake;

one for the woman I hardly ever phoned

because I could not think of a question

that would be worthy of a mind like hers;

one for the Greek restaurant that no longer exists,

where I duelled with someone over halva and ice cream

because we had no money to buy

a second portion;

one for the man who dared me

to do the wrong thing, to live

dangerously, and then died of it;

one for the man who fathered me well,

and then asked me, just before the end,

to forgive him for his ignorance.

You can consign the body to the fire—

the bills, paid or unpaid; the outmoded ways of being

and the very bad poetry.

The names, the names are not consumed.

They refuse to be anything else

than the sum of my parts,

hovering now on an invisible screen

without ever quite adding up.

 - Jacques Coetzee

Frames

Used to the firm metal scaffolding

manufactured in segments,

standard in South Africa,

I guess my mind constructed them

the world over: so in Kuala Lampur

those bamboo racks, neat and high,

surprised me, caught my organic eye,

and the wooden poles of Lagos,

or low slung around buildings in Juba.

With imagination swaying,

I marvel at the organic vitality,

the close-to-groundness,

the human trust in the ways of growth

in tension with the more aggressive

ways of metal and concrete,

the firm safety we seek

to scaffold our lives.

 - Brian Walter

Deep Listening

It happened again yesterday:

in the middle of a fine conversation

about sublime and lofty things

something in me switched off, and I found myself focusing

on the slight pull at the pit of my stomach

as you stepped away from me for a moment

to pour wine for an honoured guest.

I could still hear the separate music

in our four voices, but

the words, the words had gone out of range.

The only detailed information then

came from the song of my blood—

subterranean, preverbal—

calling for your touch across the table.

There are no words for such music:

not in company, not when we’re alone.

All I could say for certain then

to myself, under my breath,

was that all lofty things,

raised up in defiance of gravity—

all the immortal words, and all great music—

seemed to be reconfigured there;

rooted again in the fire

that sings and sings, unheard, in our hidden blood.

 - Jacques Coetzee

Steam

All through the dark

insomnia and night fears

I’d hear the knock and hiss

and clack of the steam trains

as they’d shunt and chuff

between the station and North End,

or the narrow gauge down south

whistle her running steam – the Apple Express

from the Langkloof,

as through my dark of mind-hurt

there’d come clicking on the night breeze

and a sudden clatter of tracks,

syncopated with the heart beats

of child panic into the dead

of the darkness

till the bells tolled thrice

at the Dutch Reformed Church,

and my head would twist

on the pillow of necessity,

and I’d think to bash my living skull

against the wall to shut up

the sounds and the thoughts

and to shove – like steam forced

into strength – hot sleep into being.

 - Brian Walter

All night

I’ve read all night, and now dawn

rolls grey to the east, with little sound

this hour to disquieten me,

only the last whispers of rain

or eavesdroppings of artless thought.

I have renounced all hope of sleep.

She’s a strange mistress, Insomnia.

It is still, and twilit quiet, and I’m lost

in her arms, reading this restless time

away, away back to the old Egyptians,

remembering their first creation mound

and that earliest light. I am so far back

in mind, so lost in the seeps of rain,

that I almost miss the clockwork

of the awakening rhythms: the jet thrust

of the early flight, the trucks and traffic

along Buffelsfontein Road,

the mind-made worlds of profit and loss,

and the timetables they strive to keep.

 - Brian Walter

Walkway

The sudden green of the walkway

tumbles up in reaching leaves

and autumn flashes amidst the dark shades:

but splashed across the pavement

damp litter is speckled and spattered.

Old plastic Satan has fled this way

shedding scales of dirt and dollops

of body-filth, damp with bad breath,

and the soil is flecked with dead

and discarded plastic; white hues

of promised purity; and streaked

with the yellows, reds and blues

of the old wrappings of idle shoppers.

Litter sleeps filthily upon the earth,

breeding.

And schoolchildren amble by,

hands in pockets, beanies pulled   

low against the wintering sky,

walking the path between

the living green

and profane carelessness,

the long path of the shadow

of death.

 - Brian Walter 

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

graça

            in memory of Norman Morrissey

your bedside lamp
made sommer with an 
empty graça-bottle  ̶

the etiquette still in tact

my eyes linger on the subtitle
casa de ouro
house of gold

yes! i shout
gold is this house
which flows with
music and poetry
tea and honey

(mumbling aside: one day i'll unscrew
the bottle-stand,
fill 'er up with
your favourite drink,
screw it fast again
and flick the switch!
the heat will suffuse your bedroom
with intoxicated light
you'll get graciously drunk
without having a single sip!)

 - Lara Kirsten