Category Archives: South Africa

HARBOUR

HARBOUR

I am at the harbour
looking for
thinking about, well,
harmony

but people believe
I see the world so differently
for me any kind of harmony
is going
to be difficult to achieve

in the quayside cafe I sit
watching the ships arrive
watch
them leave

in my coffee tiny things
appear to be swimming
as small
as ants, or even smaller
like atoms
or electrons

if I stir my tea the wrong way
suddenly it will become
the coffee
I should have
ordered in the first place

the coffee you believe
yoy saw me drinking
but a moment ago

and there we shall be back
in Duncan Dock Cape Town
April 64

and the mail liner passenger ship
that brought me
having just berthed divulging
my parents younger sister
and tiny (but not
molecule-small) two-
year
old brother

me never having been born
or not narrowly having
drowned in
the ship’s first class
pool
me thinking I could swim
me thinking

myself capable of anything
a whole wide workd and
brave
new land
to conquer (young
British boy
do we not
always conquer?)

and so I push off in
the deep end

make a few strokes
and go under

time enough for chat
with God

a terrifying few seconds with him
chance for him to explain
me eternity

and how alternate history
fits into that picture.

Tea coffee. Tea coffee.
Coffee tea. Cannot make my mind up in the queue for
hot beverages
maybe need a dice
or something

and here we are
where we were
sans little boy braggart
British confidence

long sans apartheid
and any kind of attachment
to any former self

perhaps this is
my gift, my redemptive
sole contentment

perhaps
here at the harbour
watching ship after ship
where I am not a passenger

arrive
depart

I can enjoy whatever harmony
this is and
what it might now mean

SETTING  (for JM Coetzeeon his 83rd birthday)

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

WHEN THE POEM READS …. YOU! reading my poems at Marionhill Monastery KZN RSA 2005

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WHEN THE POEM READS …. YOU! reading my poems at Marionhill Monastery KZN RSA 2005

TRAVELLERS/TRAVELERS

TRAVELERS/TRAVELERS

Travelers

   is close to the border

nation to the North where

people are

             same same

meanwhile sat in Travellers 

downing best Springbok-level

                                 golden lager

just now

      might get lucky 

                              or the Universe

my Universe our Universe

might end

                 of a sudden

thanks to

    climate change or

inertial

    guidance

have drunk so much

am in no

      fit state to drive

am in need

of some guidance

                          need to

go full Horus

       align myself

                    with the stars

shame 

         on my masculinity

so drunk already     much

philosophical discussion but

                           no

stinky finger

              no sneaked     innuendo

headed in

direction and to conclusion

      could label 

                    quick relief

but all your Northerners

(way further North than Botswana

if not

      quite to

                the pole)

must be bemused 

by all these South Africanisms

just now

             meaning

next few couple of seconds next

few 

     billion years

all is good in this haze-brain state

courtesy of Dionysus 

perfectly scientific 

       given the relativity of space time

strictly 

        interpreted 

                            according to

the single-wave

superposition (imposition) 

                           totally out of 

your right mind

       brutally simplified

          many-

                    worlds theory

of suiwer quantum mechanics whole- sale

                               human

supply

         and cosmic demand.