He wakes

i.

He wakes to the sight
of a vast plain of water, a curved blue horizon.
He wakes to a presence
sustaining itself, the lives
within its salt-filled embrace.
He wakes to the resilience
of the unsleeping sea.

ii.

He wakes to a directive from his bladder,

to the silent river of his blood.

He wakes to the sound of the cat
devouring her breakfast in the kitchen.
He wakes, not to the alarm on his phone,
but to time’s incessant ticking.

iii.

He wakes to the day’s tasks.
He wakes to the heart’s endless lessons,
to traps and routines.
He wakes and knows that he is stuck,
that desire and clarity again lie
behind a veil.
He wakes, must begin
at the beginning – the only port
from which he can set sail.

 - Eduard Burle

THRESHOLD

I step out of the car like a man who knows
his own mind, a man who has learned
how to frame words in a sentence,
how to draw the circle of power around himself
and not to step over it into disarray.

I take one step inside your door—and immediately
begin to come undone without a sound.
If I must fall, then let me fall
like a man who knows just enough to be quite certain
that he’s a fool; that words fall short
of the mark, unable now to say
anything worth repeating, and what does it matter?

I have given myself twenty minutes to offer yet again
my unconditional surrender
in the face of this wave, carrying me
across your threshold and into the unknown.

 - Jacques Coetzee

Dear Joanne

How can a human get used to grief?
I’ve found grief to be
forever the stranger,
pointing ways to walk
that are unfamiliar
to nose and heart and feet,
pulling nerves like fine wires,
singing plaints,
through tissues, organs,
hurting and continuing
to stretch the subtle body,
sometimes seemingly beyond its elasticity.

Does grief teach
the ability not to be whole,
does it take a person that far
into incompleteness?

I think so. And then also
that is where love hides.

It ambushes you, warm arms
are suddenly around you,
won’t let you go, tease, play
with your alive surprise
and yes-no-yes laughter.

Such a mystery is grief,
we dance in ways
we never knew the body could.

Sending you lots of love. 

          4.1.2024 Robert Hichens’ birthday and nearly 10 years since he died.

 - Silke Heiss

SMALL MIRACLE

(after Guy Davenport)

Some time in the 1950s,
during a visit from Tom Eliot
to St Elizabeth’s Asylum,
where he’d been confined instead of standing trial for treason,

Ezra Pound—who had sought to command
presidents, reform governments
in accordance with the dictates of his will,
ranting at the entire world, insisting it should change—

put up his feet on a table
in a small room in a long, dim corridor
(Tom Eliot did the same) so as to make enough room
for one of the inmates, his name lost to history,
to manoeuvre an imaginary
vacuum cleaner.

 - Jacques Coetzee

She wishes you a happy birthday
(after a black harrier swoops across in front of her car)
for Jacques

Had I the black harrier on my hand,
that sharp-eyed, sharp-clawed, sharp-beaked bird,
I’d let him fly, in front of you,
for you to hear his clap of wings,
perhaps a haunting cry.

But I, being me, have only this poem,
which I send you per voice clip,
for you to dance and hum into.

4th December 2023

- Silke Heiss

FLOWERS FOR WINTER

“Ah, where will I find flowers
come winter…”— Friedrich Hölderlin

There’s a cold hand round my heart as I write to you,
even though it’s still high summer in this room;
even though you are the one
for whom I swore to forsake all others.

Everyone knows you turned me out of the house we shared,
summoned your lackeys, signed the papers
and cut me loose like an unprofitable servant.

(Who would I have to become, what voice
would I have to assume, before
I could make poems out of those battering days,
when you had absolute power to hurt, and used it?)

And then, on the day I finally faced you again,
when I closed the passenger door of the uber car
that would take me away from you, wherever the hell I wanted,
away from the narrow room you’d chosen,
I slowly began to see: it was my hunger
for experience, for more life
that finally hurt you into malice.
You must have seen my hands were finally empty,
that they could find no flowers for you anymore
now winter had finally claimed you, claimed our house.
And so you turned me out of doors,
possessed, perhaps, by some ghost
of your old generosity—

knowing I would smell my way,
sooner or later, to a place
where the seasons still turned, where spring
was still possible.

 - Jacques Coetzee

Beyond language
for Ed

When my forehead surrenders,
puts itself against your shoulder,
you turn away in your sleep,
and my neck angles strangely,
but the discomfort does not matter,
it’s the contact that counts.

I plug myself into you
and good happens –
a wordless, explanationless,
self-evident,
simple
yes of peace.

My thoughts dissolve
into your skin, my woman intuition
streams
into the gleam
of your ripening genius. Something along
those lines.

The rain, which has been massaging
our roof, pounds louder.

 - Silke Heiss

AT PIRATES BAR AND GRILLE, PLUMSTEAD

Half past midnight already, and whatever
critical faculties he ever had
have long deserted him. These past few months he has learned
to be glad of the disco shlock
that pours into the room from the loudspeakers:
Gloria Gaynor vowing for all of us
that she’s indestructible, can survive anything;
Abba’s promise that we’ll sing like we did before.

Last year he would have hunched his shoulders, scowled
at the production values of such sweetened fare.
Now, with the old heartache finally behind him,
he is ready to swallow it all down—
the glamour, the reaching out for new horizons,
for desire that has forgotten the blinding rage
twisting its face.

Now Whitney Houston is belting out again
that she wants to dance, to feel the heat
with somebody who loves her, and all he can do
is swallow back tears of gratitude for this
rough magic, still somehow accessible
even now; for the disaster
that shattered him into pieces
just in time.

 - Jacques Coetzee

Wink
for Nia Outis

     i.
Words ripple in on the wind,
on the water,
pools are clearer
than a brooding heart.

     ii.
Far, far on the eastern horizon
is a shy wink of silver
on the sky-clouded sea.

 - Silke Heiss  

elke dag word my hande hergebore

met die saad van 'n oneindigende veld

van gebare

   *

die kuns van die kleine

is die strewe werd:

een klein tree

is die begin van

die duisend-myl pelgrimstog

   *

hier met die woorde

so digby my

voel ek so tuis en geanker

deel van genesing lê 

in taal

   *

speel spel

spul spaander

spat spalk

spoel spoeg

spuit sprei

sproei spog 

spruit

die woordspieëlings    

   *

drup-drup die dig-druppels

watter grond 

gaan hulle natlei 

vandag?

   *

uit die traankliere van die druppelinge

 - motreën - 

die stil ekstase van 

seëninge

 - Lara Kirsten

A dirge for Lochart
for Jen Whyle

Again, as years ago,
I heard the forest in the valley
chant – a haunting, mystic sound,
unmistakeable.
At first I thought it was humans,
so choral was the chant –
but humans can’t traverse
the thick, virgin forest there.

Then I realised the ‘Standing People’*
were offering a gift.
They chanted four or five times,
at irregular intervals.
Everything else was still,
and mist lay quietly,
veiling the valley.

And it occurs to me,
in the writing of this,
that the trees brought up through their roots,
nourished by the Tyume River,
a dirge for Lochart,
a fine man, of the good earth,
whose sudden death shook
not only the two-leggeds.

          – The Edge, 1st February 2024 (two days after Lochart died)

 - Silke Heiss


*The name given to trees by the indigenous inhabitants of America.

Dear S, who survives Inimba?

I don’t know how to un-teach our children
all the tricks I teach them sleeping.

there are many ways to die                 inside your body

I watch myself         teach them           I want to jump

but I am screaming     inside my eyes:               do not do as I do

but they are chained to me             so close.so tight

If I push them off this mountain

will they survive me?

 - Qhali

For a young woman

You come outside, and I see you
– you don’t see me, but I look at you.
My life turns right around, imagining,
turns so utterly that I’m young
again, dark of hair, and slim.
But you become lined with age
and grey with life. I watch you still,
and thank God you are what you are,
and I am I. My mind lets you be.
This is the way of things.
I smile at you. The guitarist
strums his chords, and the singer sings.

 - Brian Walter

April 15th, 2020 (a.s) - Ndiyaxhwilwa

Ndinyuquzwa zimpethu ebuchotsheni
ulusu ngumkhence
ndizikrwempa ngeenzipho ezimdaka.

Ndikhwela iindonga ezithethayo
ndibaleka abantu abangenabuso
bayandixhwiphula.
Isibane sengqondo sicimile.

 - Qhali

Group work

We wrote that picture stukkend
after every poet chose an element
so we could each gooi the writing
– the onion seller, the dark door,
the shelter, doodles on a blue wall,
peeping face, sitting woman with a doek –
composing openly and free. I said,
“What a poem we could make
should we combine our words
and shape all into one-ness –
our different strands of script
bending into verse-being . . .
Imagine what would be taught
by discussion: the disputes,
selecting which piece would open
our poem, which would follow,
which blend its being with another
to multiply meanings.” But we didn’t.
We left that task for each creative self,
for each multiplicity of mind,
to find resonance in contending thought.

 - Brian Walter

The Ecca Poets welcome their guest poet for 2024 - Qhali.

To kick-off the poetry posts for this year, here a poem by Qhali

Return to Tsolobeng

Two cubs in my hands
one with open eyes - the other asleep.
I’m placing them in my mother’s palms
tougher than mine - to shield them.
I’m going to the mountains for a while
where two old women wait for me
outside a green hut guarded by brown horses
at the top of a hidden mountain
overlooking an old river full of queens and secrets.
The two old women will only watch me as I build
with hands covered in manure to cast walls to find me
and I will sleep only to visit the elders, but I will wake
with the ones that do not speak, to save my children
from a life without rivers, and mountains, and horses,
and quiet, and land, and snow, and a mother.
I will wake each day despite the urge to stay on the other side
to build a home in Tsolobeng,
so I teach my children what is in a name,
so a life of colour is not that of complexion,
so a life of wealth is not that of the tangibles,
so that each click that comes out of my mouth
has a root with a home they can call their own.
I have been missing for a while, long before this trip.
Sometimes a mother needs to return home to be a mother
because sometimes this place can make you forget
how to be a human,
how to feed a child and be nowhere else,
how to look at a child with open eyes,
which turns you took that cut wires in you
because you are on an edge and the mind is screaming
and they are screaming, and the world is screaming
and if you say one more word, or take one more wrong turn,
whatever colourful string is holding your body together with your soul
will unravel.
I am going back to Tsolobeng
back to my ancestors’ land
where truth and sanity
wait in whispers.

 - Qhali

 Warm as sleep 

Light feeds the leaves:

these translucent
green flames

drowsing in sun’s
late afternoon fire.

   ***

Leaves in afternoon light:

to paint, in words warm as sleep,
as sun-drenched stones,

the glow of their mute
green speech.

 - Eduard Burle

klawer-aarde 

        vir my Feetjie-Fiona & Abs van Rooyen

ek het nooit grond besit
maar vandag met my vingers al hangend oor die klaviatuur
voel ek hoe dit is om ‘n stukkie aarde myne te kan noem
‘n stukkie swart en wit klank-grond
wat ek met die dieptes en hoogtes op en af kan klim

hoe baie klaviere het al onder my hande gegaan
onder my palms gesing
gebrand gevloei gevlieg
maar dan moet ek gou koebaai sê
want hulle was nooit myne nie

maar hier staan my eie klavier nou haar stewige staan in my see-huisie
is dit hoe dit voel om ‘n stukkie aarde te besit?
‘n stukkie woud?
‘n stukkie wind?
‘n stukkie oseaan?
‘n stukkie oase?

ek sien uit na die trillende horisonne wat deur die snare gaan oopbreek
die getye van melodieë wat die mure gaan afbreek
en die sterrehemel van die harmonieë
wat in my hart gaan inbreek
ek sien menigte klein oerknalle wat die punte van my vingers gaan lostoor!

maar vir nou,
buig ek neer voor hierdie klawer-aarde
en ek sê dankie  dankie   dankie

 - Lara Kirsten

 

Avian observations

Red-eyed doves on the roof:

she signals, he mounts,
then a flutter of wings –

the insistent repetitions
of blood that sings.

   ***

The storm approaching –
and yet, where
the aloe stirs,

a familiar
winged visitor –
nimble, undeterred –

sunbird.

   ***

Dark glint
of beak, eyes, and feathers,
as he veers, manoeuvres, flip-flaps away –

startled crow.

   ***

The call of an owl –
how deep the well
of night.

 - Eduard Burle

verrukking van klank

vlugtig vlieg die ritmes uit my vingers
en draai ek in 'n kolk van ekstatiese malkoppigheid
totdat swart en wit,
spier en hout,
son en vel
ek en jy
een word
die musiek ons vasboei
die melodie ons in hegtenis neem
en die wispelturigheid van die sikloniese ritmika
ons verewig gevangene hou
in die verrukking van klank

exuberance of sound

flightily the rhythms fly from my fingers
and i turn in a whirlpool of ecstatic madness
till black and white,
muscle and wood,
sun and skin,
you and i
become one
till the music shackles us
the melody takes us captive
and the moodiness of the cyclonic rhythm
ensnares us forever
in the exuberance of sound

 - Lara Kirsten