tussen pers vygies

ek sit op 'n skilferende creosote bankie in Nature's Valley

die goue gedenkplaatjie op die rugkant lees:

Die Muller familie - 4 geslagte

soos my tone oopsprei tussen die pers vygies

sing ek 'n sagte lied

ter herinnering aan die Mullers

my oog korrel na 'n by wat holomhoog 

in 'n bos stuifmeeldrade skrop en suig 

en krap en beur en stoot 

ek gaan af op my knieë

- ek self holomhoog - 

om die aksie van naderby te bekyk

hoe langer ek kyk 

hoe meer blomme en bye merk ek op

bye wat verwoed mekaar uit blomkele stoot

groot korrels geel stuifmeel 

klou taai

aan spartelende beentjies

instinktiewe verpligting

vreugde

oorlewingswaansin?

wat dryf die bye tot hierdie 

onophoudelike soeke, versameling, korwe bou 

en die magiese heuningalchemie?

 - Lara Kirsten

THE WITNESSES

Throughout the wedding service,

from her seat in the third pew,

the groom’s grandmother held

the right hand of her husband, in part to prevent it

from exploring her thigh.

From behind the microphone, an uninspired

voice tried to breathe life

into stern advice for the newly-weds,

written by a fiery

first-century celibate.

Walking out afterwards

into the heat, the blinding glare of summer,

the grandmother’s eyes found the eyes

of a much-married man, drawn into himself

at the love-feast, unsure

if he himself could commit such a rash act

yet again. She winked at him, said:

“I do find things like these get easier

as you get older.”—meaning

marriage, meaning

the perilous leap into the arms

of another, requiring

some skill and much luck, but mostly

a love of broken things,

of imperfection. Then her own husband’s face

slowly softened and relaxed, and he began to feel

the earth beneath him again, crushed grass

under his feet in spite of his shoes;

and a slight breeze came out of nowhere

to ruffle his clothes; to lift his dampened spirits

again and again, as they all walked on emboldened

into the beautiful, wicked world.

 - Jacques Coetzee

DIOGENES

Today he appeared

to me again:

the old man who lives in a barrel;

is content to share it with a dog;

eats, drinks and relieves himself

in public places, like the dog;

calls it his master in all things.

Once, according to ancient legend,

when he was already old and disreputable,

world-conquering Alexander sought him out

and offered him anything, anything

his copious mind could imagine, anything

his body could desire.

Diogenes, it is said,

did not hesitate an instant.

“Stand a bit further off,” he said. “Right now

you are standing in my sun.”

This morning, sitting in our winter garden—

yearning for yesterday’s wine,

kisses and long, hot showers—I suddenly remembered

that stubborn old man. Once, it is said,

he smashed a bowl—his only possession—

after seeing a peasant boy

drink from the public fountain.

You—always intent

on what works best, and concerned

with sharing the world—said:

 “Why didn’t he give the bowl

to the boy if he no longer wanted it?”

But Riaz, from the other side

of an ascetic turn

only dimly dreamed of

in my philosophy,

just smiled and said: “Of course.

He wouldn’t want to corrupt

the boy; to encourage anyone

to want anything that wasn’t

essential.”

So now, even in this

quiet, water-wise garden,

I can feel the lashing

of the old man’s tongue.

Brave and reproachful, he stands at my shoulder

each time I click to buy

something I don’t need;

each time I reach out, one more time,

to assure myself that you’re still here—

beyond reason, beyond

anything I could have hoped

to earn or deserve;

just here, beyond argument or philosophy—

just because.

 - Jacques Coetzee

die visioenêre waatlemoen breek in stukke

die visioenêre waatlemoen breek in stukke

op die geteisterde teer

die agterdogtige akkedisse skarrel opeens

in wye sirkels om die sanikende stroopspatsels

die eenoog eekhoring trippel in pastorale parentese nader aan die soete mise-en-scène

die merkwaardige mites probeer hard om nie

onder die klas van buitensporige bewerings

gekatalogiseer te word nie

dit is so 'n onbeduidende onreg wanneer

die argetipiese aksies deur die peremptoriese patriarge en burokratiese boelies so waansinnig weggevee word

die parate pruimedante en pluimende proteas

omsingel die fanatiese foonaanbidders en

hulle kettingvormende kak

en smyt hulle die suigende seestrome in

dit is te verwagte dat die duistere dwingelandy 

waaronder ons onsself en ander sit

die yslike eina veroorsaak waaraan die weemoedige wêreld ly 

 - Lara Kirsten

DESERT SONGS

I

Desert fathers, you who live in caves

and grottos, who ran away

in search of silence, hear me.

Slowly I become acquainted with you,

even though an urgent voice calls me

back, always, into the crooked world.

I too know the bliss

when the hard wind dies down;

when the heart has found what it asked for,

and still finds it good, if only for a moment

between one season and the next.

Give me today

just a little of your silence,

although I bend the knee to the things of this world.

Give me the strength

to remain waiting in the same place,

to remain standing underneath the sun

till the song sounds clear again

between the bones of my skull.

II

Desert mothers, you who stand

with empty arms, who dance

with the invisible bridegroom,

by what roads does the heart

travel to this place? What appetites

slowly spent themselves

and were calmed, until you came here?

Can you see me, will you recognise me

where I stand, in the hard light

of my desire?

Is there room for my hunger

there, where you read together?

And when the sombre song finds you each morning,

does it have knowledge of me

and the shadow I cast

across the path,

in this noisy old world?

 - Jacques Coetzee

Do the work

I wake at night

to do the work

which day has not allowed.

– Silke Heiss, 26^th August 2019

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

Yellow dog gift

He leads the pack that chased

my duiker –

he knows I dislike him:

runs when I come.

Just outside the fence,

I see he wants to enter

with a gigantic thing in his mouth,

but, seeing me, he puts it down.

He puts it down deliberately,

puts it down as something intended

for me. And runs.

I heed the sign and go

to look

at

the badly decomposed head

of a goat – eye sockets

maggoted, a dry piece of lip

curling a slim tusk

at the front of the jaw.

Pawing through the meanings,

I sense dimly

that my past of sacrifice

is done, and that battles lost

are won.

– Silke Heiss, 25^th October 2019

SINGULARITY

She wanted to slip out of her complex mind;

she wanted to slip

out of the museum of many names,

where each thing is inventoried, ordered, shelved;

she wanted to find a place

where the shell of language was soft enough

for her to edge her way

into the silent heat before thought ever was.

And each morning she would wake

with the half-formed memory of escape

still on her lips, the dishevelment

of her night’s journey.

And the same old familiar world was all around her,

and oh, it was lovely, it was terribly beautiful;

she would stretch her arms towards the sky outside,

try to keep her mind empty and innocent.

But always, before she could stop them, the layers were there:

the thick, multiple scatter of many words,

the sheltering clothes against her naked skin.

 - Jacques Coetzee

Laughing

White daisies completely cover

the dunes,

fronting a blue-green sea –

as if they were laughing:

at the time we were told

we couldn’t bathe here, because

whites

weren’t allowed

on that beach.

– Silke Heiss, 28^th August 2019

fluweelagtige verwarring

sy en haar rebelese ribbes kom lê

onder die goeiste genade groen van die bome

haar bene bulder van verligting om 

vry van stoel te wees

haar agsiestog arms wil net wegsink 

in die spierkragtige sintaksis

van somer

haar wag-‘n-bietjie wange bloos van 

die lekkerkry van haar verbeelding

haar dragtige duime kan nie wag

om lofliedere oor sy vel te baar

deur die geweldlose gordyne sien

hy haar baanbrekende borste

hy lig sy waansinnige wenkbroue

en gaan staan styf teen die koel malvapoeding mure

hy mik-mik na haar 

maar die kniehalterende tafelhoeke

en slinkse stofballe pootjie hom 

hy bly tuur na buite waar 

die bloeiende ballonne net nie wil stol

die lug slaan uit vol kneusplekke in pleitende pers

al wat hom sal red is 

'n piromaniese pasaangeër

sy sal dan dalk in sy hart begin kan glo

sy sien die triestige tarentaal oor 

die hygende hoofweg hol

die migrerende marionette weet nie waarheen!

alles voel soos fluweelagtige verwarring

vreesaanjaende frikatiewe glip uit haar mond

haar beneukte boude kry uiteindelik sit

soos wat die waaghalsige wolke

die roekelose donker invaar

sy klim binne-in die kabbelende kerslig

en vou haar woorde een-vir-een uit 

oor die pruimedantkleurige papier

 - Lara Kirsten

THE RAGE FOR ORDER AT CAFÉ GANESH

(With Apology to Wallace Stevens)

Clear heads we must have had still,

stumbling out of a winter night

into that sudden din—

all those strangers sitting at their ease

under the same roof. I imagined

soft, warm lighting, even though

I couldn’t see it.

We had been drawn together, us four,

by the slow, stubborn love of words,

the slow fever in the brain

that sets us raging at the broken world,

to call it to order.

Ah, but the world was stronger that night.

It beckoned to us through the PA system

in the voice of a Bob Marley,

begging us, commanding us to gather ourselves

up into a dance

around a central point without a name

in any book of words.

And we just sat there, sentences left unfinished,

our faces relaxing into slow mirth,

as the faces of men do who think too much;

the place where each of us ended

and everything else began

slowly becoming imprecise, confused

as the wine and music mingled.

Pale Wallace Stevens, so beautifully sober,

composing verses in your Sunday best,

tell us: how could we learn to phrase the broken world

and set it singing, except

from such unmoorings? From where this rage for clarity

and pure, unruffled air

if not out of last night’s dishevelment?

 - Jacques Coetzee

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