Karoo Sunset
(Between Three Sisters and Beauford West)
This is the moment that atones for all
The silent sun slips swiftly behind the brown hill
That instantly embraces the Karoo in healing shadow,
Utterly still.
All around the horizon the hills have joined hands
In a protective circle. Those who face the west
Reflect the purple splendour of departing day
Which passes from their keeping to the sky
And turns to pink and blue before it dies away,
Save in the saffron West where the glow grows and lingers
For a long time, until approaching night
With dark and jealous fingers
Snuffs the light.
So does the splendour of love. Touching the arid life
Atone in that moment for the heat of the day
And the unending strife.
Veritas, Constantia, C.P.
Karoo Thorn Trees
I have seen them standing stark
And white and dark
Like skeletons against the umber earth.
“Can these bones live I cry?” I cried.
They rattled and replied
With ghostly mirth.
But what they said I could not understand
Until I passed again
Through that transfigured land
After rain.
Then I knew that Time would always
Bring the young and tender green
Of latent Spring,
The waiting thorns regain
Their living sheen.
From a distance, then, the white thorns sing
The lovely song of fruit trees blossoming.
Karroo in Drought
Oh Pity! Pity! Mother Earth is tired –
Barren her breasts whence the milk of life has fled:
And all the dreams to which she once aspired,
And all her pretty new-born hopes are dead.
Helpless, she hears her hungry children cry,
And bows in anguish, for she has no breast;
She cannot suckle them and they must die,
Or leave her, heaping curses on her head.
Her mother heart is wrung with agony.
Her mute appeal to the brazen skies is vain;
No grief contorts their pale-eyed symmetry,
They have no tears of pity for her pain.
Oh Thou, who carest when the sparrows fall
Have mercy on the mother of us all!
Karroo
Space… and silence… and infinite solitude –
This is the great Karroo, where the mighty sun
Shines with primeval force on the naked earth,
Remorseless, splendid with pitiless might.
Here are no cameos, no miniatures
Of delicate, dainty-fingered workmanship.
But mighty sculptures carved by a giant hand
Out of the crude and primitive rock of the land.
At night the clean-cut stars are lavish flung
Across the distant, unattainable dome
Of heaven, like polished topaz random cast,
Plucked, mayhap, from Africa’s tameless heart
By the hand that hewed the valleys and the hills.
Here is nothing small, no paltriness,
No puerile prettiness or levity.
Beauty is sober here, with majesty
Too big for man’s small mind to comprehend.
Our pretty, trivial adjectives are lost
Like pebbles in this vast immensity.
They leave no ripple in the stream of Time
That flows unchallenged down the ageless hills;
The hills that look and laugh in silent scorn
At microscopic windmills, miniature dams
And the tiny homes of infinitesimal man.
“Thus far thou come,” the desert says, and then closes her iron hand and squeezes dry
The spots where man has tilled the surface soil.
Claiming her own again, inviolate.
Have you not lain at night beneath those stars
Impersonal as jewels and as bright,
While moonlight’s filtered silver floods the veld –
And in the desert’s heat grown suddenly cold
To feel some hidden menace, some pale ghost…
Mayhap of ancient tragedy, may be
A prophecy of foreboding future ill?
There is no sound, no stir, no breath of wind
But you can feel the breathing of the hills,
Their rise and fall beneath the watching sky –
And you know you lie upon a living breast…
You hear the heart of Africa beating … beating …
And wonder. Is it friendly or a foe?
The torn tree, pale white skeletons of drought,
Gyrate weirdly, stretching their old dry bones
In tenuous shapes… you strain your aching eyes,
Your ears attune to catch inaudible sounds…
You shudder … and suddenly you realise
How small man is. The weird, uncanny light,
The naked beauty of the desert night,
Are unaware of you. Far greater stakes
Are joined, of magnitude beyond man’s mind
To ponder. Reassured, you rest again.
Mayhap a jackal, trembling seeks his lair
Conscious, as you, of sinister mystery
That permeates the night with grim portent,
Where the passing of man is but an incident
In the mighty drama of Eternity.
Keep Me Aware of Beauty
Keep me aware of beauty, Lord.
Never let me pass
Unheeding a bird in the sky
Or a flower in the grass.
Never let it be said that I have missed
The sparkle in a spider’s web
Dew drenched, sun kissed.
Keep me fain to stop
For colour, be it in a garden
Or the window of a shop.
Keep me aware of the light
Inside the people I meet or know.
The light in the eyes of a friend –
Let me not dim that glow
Ever, or mar what I cannot mend.
Beauty is everywhere and to spare,
Even in a sword,
But sight gets overlaid with care.
Keep me aware of beauty, Lord.
Airlie Close, Constantia C.P.
Kerrera
A still sail on a sea of glass-
The sun half shrouded in the mist-
Still mountains dreaming as we pass,
And verdant moorlands, summer kissed:
All day islands lie and gaze,
Reflected in the silent Sound;
The idle sheep in silence graze,
And filmy clouds cling softly round.
Kerrera, like thy hilly isle
Where all things still and lovely seem,
And summer silent drifts the while,
I, too, in peace would lie and dream.
Knysna Holiday
Here beauty bides contented, where the hills
Enfold in circling arms this long lagoon.
The sea creeps in and out, never stills
Its longing for the river’s placid croon,
And for the verdant loveliness that fills
The quiet valley in the hush of noon.
The sea creeps in and out and sighs and wills
In vain to break its bondage to the moon.
So we creep in, and for a little space
We lose ourselves within the placid stream
Of peace that flows unchallenged through this place;
Are one with beauty’s universal dream.
Too soon life’s strong inexorable tide
Will draw us back to troubled seas outside.
Kyklos
The secret of the cycles - if man knew
The secret of the cycles . . . of the tide . . .
Of ebb and flow . . . what miracles he could do:
What energies he could saddle, tame and ride
There is a time of ebb and a time of flow
Unalterable - as the night and day.
There is a time to come and a time to go,
A time for movement, and a time for stay . . .
The rise and fall of the blood, the path of the moon,
The hidden cycles of man and God, and earth
And universe, revolving late or soon . . .
The turning wheel, and life and death and birth
To find and fit the cycle is to cease
From fruitless friction, is to be at peace,