Winter’s Night

 

Cold is the westwind that blows

A dirge to the day as it goes

Starlight and shade dapple the glade

In half light gleams a winding stream

Silent and white as it froze

 

The voice of the wind, mournful and sad

Calls to the grass that beckons like hands

Dew on the leaves that tremble and freeze

As day turns to night glistening white

A shroud of frost covers the land

 

~*~

 

Memories

In Tribute to the Afrikaans Poet Uys Krige

 

The singing doves of Naples

Around the moon they fly

A bunch of dark grey grapes

On the trellis of the sky

 

The lazy hills of Kenya

Like a python in the sun

Snake across the trembling plains

Where herds of Kudu run

 

London, animal in the mist

In the streets I hear him growl

In corners blaze his bloodshot eyes

On pillar-legs he prowls

 

Mazatlan, Perth and Tripoli

Names that roll through my mind

And awaken bittersweet memories

I thought I had left behind

 

~*~

 

Images of Youth

 

In Cape Town as a child,

The world seemed magical to me

The poisonous purple of the peacock

The white mosque I saw from the mulberry tree

 

Oh, the wonder, as I lay,

In the grass watching hawks,

Circling round and around

Russet specks in the afterglow of day

 

From the train I could see

The fields passing by

Parched riverbeds and dust

A windmill, a station and three pepper trees

 

I remember my fright

When I foolishly thought

That the moon had got caught

In the web of a willow one night…

 

But the magic has grown

As the years have flown

And my heart reborn

In the light of perceptions’ dawn

 

~*~

 

Bat

In Tribute to the South African Poet Uys Krige

 

Caricature of a butterfly

First here, then there…

Falling through the air

A phantom fragment of the night

Without a sound

Hanging up-side-down

 

Personification of fright

Or animal

Imprisoned by night?

Voice like a shoe in loose gravel

Bemourning his

Banishment from light

 

Something brushes against my cheek

A dead man’s fist?

What spectre is this

That haunts the cavern of the night

Fluttering his

Half-moon wings in flight?

 

What burden is his lot to bear

This outcast in

Black funeral wear?

 

~*~

 

The Seagull

In Tribute to the Afrikaans Poets

 

Like a word in the silence he drops to the sea

To find there his trembling treasures

Which he carries aloft as he glides in a dream

Drawing an arch through the heavens

 

His shadow shifts silently over the foam

Strokes gently the cheek of a dune

And light as a sigh he circles the dome

Then gone is the wonder, too soon:

 

With a rending screech that shatters the vision

He greedily grabs at a scrap floating by

And I’m left with the thought that the gull

Is so human; grotesque but also sublime