During untypical weather on the highveld

A snow flake settled
on my eye lid -
and the glare stares back
with a thousand gazes.

I notice a kind of shadow
descibed in the myths -
a danger without outline,
and guileless -
maybe a spectre
also to be found
on the sea bed;
or somewhere in Madagascar?

Winter light flickers
through rustling leaves
like set lights
or cameras flashing.

Here are beings
of a curious nature
and with strange tentacles.
Their numerous limbs
in transpicuous cling wrap,
like cold sweat squirted
on,

walk right through me
at a feral fashion parade
which branches out in strides.

Or maybe I am
at a kind of wedding: this unrepeatable
whitening of the arms,
and the singing roots
of a concealed communion.

I flip among glimpses
onto an extraneousness:

uncommon life forms
as on a island,
lured and trapped
in my sidelong glance.

The wintery sun
- voices, dogs yapping far away
yet close by -
asudden shines full

on me
with my small network
of everyday connections
so timebound and important to myself
but rapidly fading

- fairies, elves, Brigadoon
to children -

here under the birches

like the pale beam
of a search light that discovers
a missing person.

Translated by Charl-Pierre Naudé