| To Die for Love |
| | Here i sit in the park where i dwell, For the boy i love so well, He took my heart away from me, Now he wants to set me free. That lonely night i feel alone, Searching for my way back home, I look up and feel the rain, And close my eyes to ease the pain. I ran home and cry on my bed, Not a word to mother was said, Father came home late that night, He look for me from left to right. He saw me hanging on a rope, To breathe again has no more hope, He took his knife to cut me down, And a note in my hand was found. Dig my grave, dig it deep. Dig my grave from head to feet. And on the top place a dove... |
| At a utter lost in my own country (in answer to Kelwyn Sole) |
| | I. Outside on the porch little bells dangle in the wind Outside on the porch little bells dangle in the wind (a new expensive set that you have bought) that we hear chiming even in our bedroom. My eyes follow you while you dress in a bathing suit to plunge into the neighbour’s pool and later I climb over the wall to join you. You slice spinach, feta cheese, along with mushrooms, onions and tomatoes with quick chopping movements and everything goes into a shining frying pan and on the porch we watch the setting sun enjoying our meal with some glasses of sweet wine and later while we watch Dr. House you lie with your head on my chest and after a while we begin to kiss, to caress and to undress. II. Passion sweeps us away Passion sweeps us away while only the dogs and the big yellow moon watches until spent, we lie against each other and you tell me of the difficulty of your childhood days, of a father who liquor turned into a kind of thoughtless man but how he could excel in poetry, still at times tried to live in the ways of God and that you really loved him and I tell you about growing up without a father, about how my mother did her very best to offer us a great kind of life about the destruction, the desolation and the impact of war, of being a soldier of killing another human being about being shell-shocked, with bullets whistling over your head, about my friends, comrades being shot dead while somewhere else people are eating out in restaurants, are visiting movie houses, are dancing or watching a television show. III. Outside gardenias are waving against the windows The noise of the machines outside almost sound like the echo’s of our hearts and on the dressing-table there is a vase with deep red roses while your body sticks to mine, I see the grace with which you are breathing and in your golden eyes there’s a lovely spark that reminds me how splendid it is to be young, to know that we are living and when you later doze off against me your breath whispers ingrained into me like a sweet melody and outside gardenias wave against the windows in a bushy pergola while I play with a nipple. IV. I make tea for us I make tea for us and you say that only I can make tea like this, you eat some of my rusks while our hands are just touching each other’s and it’s already after nine that you have returned from the gym and you turn the teaspoon around and around while you look at me with big eyes and I wonder what you want to tell me, see your eyes disappearing before mine; you are tired and want to go and sleep in your house and early in the morning I get an electronic letter telling me that our relationship has ended. V. I know I know that people sometimes do things to get someone back or to let the self dominate or just because it’s possible so as if they are totally free of each other in a relationship and everything just turns around the self and me. Not apart from the damage and irreparability that it leaves or the great impact that this destruction brings as if deeds do not have consequences and all the time circle out wider and yesterday, today and tomorrow are to infinity the same and it’s a fact that the reasons at times go beyond comprehension and the answers sometimes for ever stay away from you. VI. Eyes full of water confuse the picture that I keep Eyes full of water confuse the picture that I keep when I leave Pretoria on my motorbike, when I say farewell to you, at speed cut past cars on the highway where your auburn hair is now sun-drenched but destiny throws out its dice, while I am already missing you and I have got to jump to where it throws my life and the black road twists like a snake, still the sun is hot in a cobalt blue sky, while the motorbike takes my full attention and I see a swarm of birds flying up high; part of my life buzzes past with the wheels, while you stay behind. VII. I am already sleeping when you phone I am already sleeping when you phone (as if I have left you by my own choice) you tell me about your loneliness, say that you are missing me a lot, that you are alone and do not want to affront me and it’s as if the walls are folding in on you, but the conversation is really saying that you now see things in a different light and I realize that you are scared and your voice becomes thin, is full of uncertainties and you want to know if I have got someone else, in the distance over the phone I hear lightning bashing down, the cat comes in through the window and climbs on the sideboard, I see that the big old clock pointing to after eleven and I put the telephone down and wonder why you are phoning? VIII. I lost you suddenly I lost you suddenly when I was again without a contracted job and this crisis (of being without work) happens over and over again and every time I have got to start from scratch, while I am looking in confusion in the fog of live that folds around me for meaning, to something new to encourage me. You say that you also now at times listen to Handel’s water music and although it is beautiful, there is pain for me in it, everything between us feels so final and settled, it is as if your voice has stopped whispering in the evening wind and it is as if that music starts my sadness. IX. Near Shoprite In the parking aria near to Shoprite in a remote corner three white people are sitting with plastic bags, blankets, unshaved, with uncombed hair, two men and a woman and the leader of the little group turns tobacco from cigarette stubs that they have picked up into an old glass jar. Later they make cigarettes from a old telephone guide and late afternoon, sometimes at sundown, this is their gathering place and I see him drawing a match against the sole of his worn leather shoe, later they ask at DJ’s if the black café owner has some leftovers that he would throw away anyway. They ask me for cigarettes and I cannot help them as I do not smoke, I do not even have enough money on me to buy a bread for them of maybe a litre of milk, I see how they try and make sheltering from boxes for the night and wonder where they hide against the winter chill, about what they do when it rains? I long to have a conversation with you and get an electronic mail at the Internet café and you say that you have got a lot of time, have thought about the problems that you find in your own personality and I wonder about your relationship with your new friend, who is probably working in Nelspruit, but it’s not my concern. X. Away I am drawn from your words Away I am drawn from your words, by deeds that I cannot make undone as if the truth is taken away by the torment flowing from the words you are telling, a tempest now enkindled in your heart. I did not choose to part but are like a sawn off tree falling where destiny demands, not where my desire wants, grasping ever grasping for the way that life used to be, trying to have you close to me. XI. How sad it is How sad it is when fog the whole morning hangs over this autumn, and now I wonder where did I fit into your life or were we just for moments, caught in each other? Today I wonder about you who with golden eyes could shine over my whole world, see a couple of rainbows where light comes down through the clouds, and now after almost a year I get an answer on my comment at your “ordinary woman” and I am sorry that my words then did not spare you and now wonder about the meaning of your words where your write: this poem is for you wishing me well and I remember our times together. XII. Is it you or I? How did I have to know that love carries no meaning to you and what was between us you viewed as a prison as if I am not even a little bit in the picture and the Lord God does not behold everything, still I wonder who in the end will suffer the most is it you or I? XIII. What is left to say? What is left to say that compulsively I wanted to get on my motorbike, that today I wanted to love you like yesterday, wanted to ride all the way to you, past the distant horizon? That when dusk came I was wondering if you are missing me, that I was astounded by the beauty of the setting sun and I wonder if the clouds are just as pretty, at the place where you are? What is left to say when I am still wondering where the end between us started, wonder about opportunities left in this country, and now I am a stranger to you whom I once loved? Maybe He had driven us apart, or maybe you had mutated away?
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