AFOOT and light-hearted, I take to the open road,
Healthy, free, the world before me,
The long brown path before me, leading wherever I choose.
Henceforth I ask not good-fortune--I myself am good fortune;
Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing,
Strong and content, I travel the open road.
The earth--that is sufficient;
I do not want the constellations any nearer;
......
"And will you cut a stone for him,
To set above his head?
And will you cut a stone for him--
A stone for him?" she said.
Three days before, a splintered rock
Had struck her lover dead--
Had struck him in the quarry dead,
Where, careless of a warning call,
He loitered, while the shot was fired--
......
I prefer red chile over my eggs
and potatoes for breakfast.
Red chile ristras decorate my door,
dry on my roof, and hang from eaves.
They lend open-air vegetable stands
historical grandeur, and gently swing
with an air of festive welcome.
I can hear them talking in the wind,
haggard, yellowing, crisp, rasping
tongues of old men, licking the breeze.
......
From ocean's wave a Wanderer came,
With visage tanned and dun:
His Mother, when he told his name,
Scarce knew her long-lost son;
So altered was his face and frame
By the ill course he had run.
There was hot fever in his blood,
And dark thoughts in his brain;
And oh! to turn his heart to good
......
'Does the blackened ruin, situated in the stony ground between Durraj and Mutathallam, which did not speak to me, when addressed, belong to the abode of Ummi Awfa?
'And is it her dwelling at the two stony meadows, seeming as though they were the renewed tattoo marks in the sinews of the wrist?
'The wild cows and the white deer are wandering about there, one herd behind the other, while their young are springing up from every lying-down place.
'I stood again near it, (the encampment of the tribe of Awfa,) after an absence of twenty years, and with some efforts, I know her abode again after thinking awhile.
'I recognized the three stones blackened by fire at the place where the kettle used to be placed at night, and the trench round the encampment, which had not burst, like the source of a pool.
......
GLIMPSE
My heart a pouch of rich wine overlays yours
A drop of blood spilled over an arum lily
It waits with longing intense, retains no tears
As it remembers its cringes of final fear when it
Jumped into your chest of steel
Your smell of fruit juice, water and old leather all around
My soul lays naked in a room of light
......
DUSTY POET
Dust before donkey doomed
a wicked whirlwind
grains of wisdom wrinkle
sand webs
dust devitalise land
here there everywhere nowhere
in eyes, on kitchen table
parched lips unfed
......
One night, I had a dream.
I opened my eyes to your beauty—
or maybe I didn’t.
I couldn’t tell.
You were there,
filling the room like breath after prayer.
And suddenly,
I knew what heaven might feel like.
Your lips—
......
I SOUTH AFRICA WOMAN AM I
I stand before you on rolling hills
Warts, wrinkles, crevices, oceans
Deserts, floods, strikes, loud laughs
In suffering and sub-atomic joy
Failures and victories
Stencilled on my skin
Wringing luminous blood
......
Two portraits of young ladies decorate my bedroom wall
in stepwise fashion - the artist’s signature not too small:
“Strevens” - distinguished for depictions of stylish women.
His Two Friends and Le Recontre, are praised with good reason.
The artist portrayed many young ladies in flowered hats,
likely mistresses of uncelebrated aristocrats.
The vignettes on my wall are undoubtedly the exception;
these two, pert and bonny, impart fragrant-jasmine perfection
......