Tag Archives: snakes

PLAAS ROMAN (farm poem)

crossing the farmyard
to my domicile

trod on something in the long grass
   perfectly camouflaged

looking
    for all the world

like a stick

     which
            of course it was

my penchant for attracting
disaster wrong this instance

not the ambush predator
viper with potent haemotoxic
venom we
both assumed it to be

nor
    Cape Cobra (here in
South Africa we have
              the prettiest cobra)
nor Boomslang, nor Rinkhals

nor that speed freak elapid of
supreme flowimg motion

olive-gray in colour
hero of
    Tarantino’s Kill Bill
but with
silky pitch-black mouth

and me
   child of 53, making me
in Chinese
terms
    a fellow of that brethren

slow and quiet until called upon
then red-hot writhing, razor
sharp wire

sign of the
            creature closest to the
Earth (as I am now) and
thus
    with such gravitas

noodle with
           nuclear chemistry, one
drop

    never instil

thought here on the farm
might
     get away from him

hide from the god of life-
energy where

  there is
      no much

                 life energy

everywhere I look

plants sacred
to you

and the way you crushed me,
destroyed me
        injected me with tragic

beginning to fear
     I might be sacred to you too

never to evade you
ever
     escape your clutches

as my last days run out
and I can
       no longer walk your wild

or love
     your women, the ones
you singled out

chose for me perfectly

dreaming of our resurrection
wondering what
you
      will tell me, what

you will ask me
man to god
       (schemed as a
dithyramb)

         about the shared pain and ecstasy torture and beauty

of this life

      (forever fall
                forever rise)