Horizon approaching, wave
by wave in the million
crumples before the placid gull reflects.

A steep stone scaled
abruptly by the salt, remains.

But that old timber with its hook
of rusted metal black with sorrow, tilts
and falls
and ends its epoch.

Fallen, that power of things
which none needs give to things:
when I laugh shall the leaves laugh?
when I walk into a room shall all
its objects be accomplices?
or walking out are stars not stars enough
without this heavier multiple of grief?

Good morning, child
good morning, child so clear
whose limbs are dark with light.

For the unreflective,
pepperpots
to sneeze out ignorance or to at least exhaust it;
for the ethical,
tobaccosmoke; for fools, shipsirens
returning to the sun
some of its intensity.

Pampoen the Moon was gobbled up
O koud is die windjie en skraal.
The bitter stars
I’ve tasted them,
My backside is mos kaal.

For the ill-willed, oranges,
whose juice pities all;
for the spirit strict
as dust of Namib,
watercress wilder than purity and just as pure;
for justice
for justice
humaniores res humanae
bright as the day.

Near a field overflowing
with barley I ride,
my mother embroiders
and lives by the sea.
Small money she makes,
with shimmering tones
of a tower on top of a distant hill
and combs of water sharp and still
and sprinkled cherries made
the size of blood.

On Sundays I visit
my father, he greets me
with sombre surprise;
and sometimes, and terribly,
laughs with such pain
that his stubbled morgen
carry the sound from stone to stone
and strike it through my marrowbone.
His second wife restored
his faith in God.

I have a small house
and a gentle child,
a young wife’s care
and a good field;
the season of berries
and vines I love.
But the hill I climb has a heavy tree
that surges with quarrels and darkens me
to a desperate mind that throws
torn light as it grows.

Too succulent for quinces comes
this fresh quo vadis,
Africa

the bud
the blossom
the scent
the intimate lightning.

Tusks traded for cash lie somewhere staling under hessian,
to be fetched for another buyer at the coast.
Tusks, skins, rhinoceros horn.

What I want, Zambesi’s
abler darkness fools with:
the full penetrant
eye, and more, much more:

eye in whose obstinate dusks and rains
the forest opens;

truths of the long lianas tense with dew.

It promised these
once, but lost them
in me. I
now, in a scooped log, ride
upon More, More, the River of the Night.