Category Archives: JM Coetzee

SETTING  (for JM Coetzee
on his 83rd birthday)

the pain
is embedded
has become
geological

so
deeply impacted
revelation is going
to be
  extinction level
be seismological

and there we are (time
as we now
    see
          thing quite unreal)

looking down from
the reverse slope of Devil’s Peak
out over the flat suburbs
(dust and sand
              of ocean reclaimed)

but your mind is
far into the interior
digging up the bones
that tell us
      pain is history;
history pain

somehow they cannot convert
your cerebral into spectacle
no technicolour out there
to match your austere

somehow
        intensity here has
of necessity to be
sharp
    and sweet

somehow
      these titanic currents, seas
meeting
        twisting, contorting

all going to
      flow ultimately
                        transformed
in that wash

for now
    so precious little melding,
blending
                                    hope
for the rude rudiments
of a comfort zone
            (plane almost scraping the
lids off shanties take offs
and landings
                      whole other, true,
South Africa
    cannot just wish away)

and there you are
                        delivered
of all our quandaries
all our questions
            bitter conundrums

absorbing the crimson sunset light
in your paradise of refuge

do you
          not think of us    recall
what was lived through?

take a
        last look our way

scan sky far
      to the West    where Sun
is forever setting

Sent from my iPhone