Muizenberg blues

Here we still lounge on love’s
wide pavilion with the bay
a thirteen-course of waves
starched linen and old silver
a ship on the horizon
like a bottle of vintage on ice
and gulls skewed like the wind-plucked
bow ties of waiters
and in the moonlight on the beach
lies a piece of kelp rotting into
the peeling harp of nostalgia

we walk along this bay
with its palm trees staring
out to sea like a family of exiled royals
their heads bent together in sadness
after being left here
by the vanishing vessel of the moon

in the mornings we sip our coffee
under once elegant ferns
peering through the window’s
Austrian blinds of waves
to where the sun is a burnt-out prophet
meditating on the crossed knees
of the mountains
against which the waves open and close
like a golden scroll
and we watch sadly how a waiter
shakes off the puffed rice sticking
to the sea’s table-cloth
and someone is folding up the
old sagging deck-chairs
of the clouds

walk to where the genteel rooms
flicker in the mother-of-pearl
Victorian afterglow of a setting sun
over furniture and on walls
a paisley of shadows like seahorses
and the yellow rust in the white
arum lilies of ancient baths
These rooms with sand heaping up
like moth-eaten clothes spilling from
the broken suitcase of a wooden porch

and we walk past the harbour
with its fluorescent fish flashing
the green neon of bed-and-breakfast signs
between the swirling reflections
of palm leaves like old fans
all that is left of the stately hotel
that made place for the new parking lot
and the bank

we walk through streets with chipped houses
and wind-swept gardens gray
like the innards of a slaughtered whale
the new suburb laid out
its streets the white bones
of a fish hanging on thin
threads of spittle in the sun

Before we return again in the morning
strolling on the beach
trying to avoid the blue-bottles of condoms
fastening around our toes
and the hot stinking beer-and-grill breaths
of the air-conditioners belched next to
psychedelic kombis full of junkies
spilling from their doors like eels
between the dealers with their eyes
white calamari-rings of greed
sucking on their dark lenses
sharing their semen-slick
black lycra subculture of the night

we walk in this town
its seaweed incense
of old memories trying to burn open
all the stinking seedy hovels of the soul
the shabby rooms of this town
that always breed good poetry
as the sad Ohm of the ocean is smashed
like Hare Krishna cymbals on the sand

this old has-been drag queen of a town
with a golden heart
trying to bring back old clients
with new gadgets and gowns
and songs

Fado of the sea

​Who will close the eyes
of the sea
the white dead moons of mussels
drifting on the water
who will mourn the sea
like the palm trees hanging
limp brown sea stars
over the blue convulsing lips
of the ocean
covered with the lipstick
of whale blood

Oh listen to the sea
seeking shelter
the wind a dazed sea creature
cowering before the attacking gulls
who walk in the tracks
of the beachcombers
pecking at the cuneiform
of an old mystical code

because the prophets
said that the sea
will no longer be
and the whales sing of this
a fado here where the sea washes up
its apocrypha of secret symbols
old printing stamps of shells and yellowed writing
of algae and black kelp of old typing ribbons
blue porcelain letters of hearts cooled off
to lukewarm abalone
and the petrified coral of the brain
spat out of the sea
and the sun, a deceased writer
drifting like a jellyfish on the water
still poisonous with potential

the whales, the archangels of the sea
will sing their fado for a last time
will quicken tired spirits for a last time
with the quicksilver of their fountains
will bind together their bouquets
of heart-fins over the ocean
with the high and low tide
of a last breath

these whales that they hunt
for their primordial sounds
universal distress calls of an age
those who say, “do not listen to the whales
they will tell you the earth is turning
faster and faster on an axis of whalebone
wearing thinner and thinner
the earth’s time is up
but we know the earth is very old
and will always be there”
and yet up there they will see
the stars have set up a quarantine
of beacons for injured whales
steered off course by false instruments

Oh listen to the fado of the whales
warning of the coming of an age
when the moon will turn red
as a blood diamond
and man and beast will be deceived
by a radar of false hearts
like a constellation of false stars

Oh listen to the fado of the sea
the sea will go lie down
for a last time in the embrace
of dark tumbling palm trees
the restless breath of the sea
will rest for ever after in Yahweh

​

Already
​

Although you are a foreigner
I already see
the new shyness of the African earth
in your body
its silences of large floating clouds
like the gestures of a restful giant
the heavy sky shedding its burdens of love
into lakes and rivers

already this love burden formed in your eyes
already you have learnt to camouflage
these Namakwa daisies of your eyes
with new black and orange stripes of sun
mimicking beetles to warn others off

already I see the aorta of your heart
is the cleft of a wild fig
in which a bird sits hovering
the white flag of your longing

already your reedy hands
are hunter-gatherers’ makeshift screens
which with the nervous energy of an African storm
fly up cart-wheeling into things

already your fingers are jittery
rain spiders suddenly all over the floor
and walls after the djembe drums of the thunder

already I see two oceans
in their hot-cold fight
for a berth
in the lukewarm blue of your eyes

already you have learnt all the folk tales
from the brazen talk
of birds and the rivers
the narrators of this continent’s history

already you enjoy the sensual fruits
of this land’s sunny afternoons grown
on the silver shores of rain clouds
relinquishing the fat eels of lightning

and although you are a foreigner
you already defend this country
with the possessiveness
of a troop of baboons
occupying the sacred ruins
of an abandoned tribal city

already you are warming your dreams
with the tropical fire of the coral tree
and the purple joy of the jacaranda

already your heart is retreating
like all local hearts
into a stone ruin
of self-denial
protected only by the rusted hinges
of a scorpion
the watchtowers of termites
the dark tunnels of hornets’ nests
in a dark desperate detente
with death

the stones of this ruin
renewed and reinforced
time and again with the humility
of donkey dung
and padded with moss and mushrooms
against the sounds of its own pride

that stone ruin
with its four portals
the portal of daybreak’s silverback jackal
the portal of the red ant
and its banner of hope
the portal of the meerkat
that can see through the spectres
and the portal of the porcupine
shooting out its silvery quills of stars
making your soul cry out
like a wounded animal

already your heart is a prickly pear bush
impaled by its own thorns
breaking over it the sap of its
own bitter cures
like each sunset
of this continent retreating
into a silence of licked wounds
around the muddied
watering hole of the heart

​

Our hometown seems so civilised
​

​Our hometown seems so civilised
with its green bowling lawn

we have a very good library
and an Olympic swimming pool

a debtors hill scraped
and cleared of sugar cane

and white cricket heroes
like angels under floodlights

Our hometown seems so dear
a green park with war cannon
covered by bloody geranium leaves
a vlei of reeds and arum lilies
and streetnames such as
Old Mill Road and Dairy Lane

Our hometown seems so civilised
but wafting from the railway line
comes the too-sweet rotten smell
of burnt sugar cane mixed with
industrial smoke and the news
of a man who stabbed his wife
forty times and cut out her tongue
because she talked too much

Our hometown seems so dear
there is still a shop veranda
with children sitting and eating toffee
on chicken cages
under zinc tubs and new bicycles
hanging from the roof

Our hometown seems so serene
but the gardener and dad
who cannot even step on an ant
were forced to drown the mamba
in the garden hole they dug up

Our hometown seems so resilient
but when will he turn up again
the panga man
the walls are crying
big blue ticks of tears

the shadows of tropical bushes
are growing bigger
and circling our houses

while the young pine trees
resemble prisoners fleeing
through the bars of the plantation

and in the morning every soul
wakes up tired
like a town on an embankment
set between wild pear trees
bereft of the harvest of their dreams
seized by the black flooding
river of the night
and washed away to sea

Our hometown seems so shattered
but at Enseleni we try and find in the vlei
a heaven-blue papyrus flower for every fresh grave
​
and horses coming up to you
on a dirt road
beat with their hooves
a warm rhythm in your heart