Namaskar (For LF)
“Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart
And soul and mind
And thy neighbour as thyself.”
“Herein”, she said, “is my religion summed.
And every morning when the bud of the day
Uncloses to the sun
I greet divinity in me
With reverence, that will illuminate the way
I tread and keep my spirit free
Of fleshly bars, that I may see the stars
When night has closed the perishable flower
Of day… I greet divinity in you…
And you… and you…whatever be the hour
Or place wherein we meet.”
She didn’t say
The words aloud. I knew
She said them silently.
And though she seldom spoke the name of God
I saw the people blossom where she trod.
Veritas, Constantia, C.P.
Nancy
Nancy-
How you charm the fancy!
In your laughter, soft and low,
Little ripples come and go.
By what necromancy
Nancy,
Do you chain our fond hearts so?
I do not even know
The colour of your tender eyes.
I only know a fair soul lies
In depths below,
That never dies.
By what necromancy,
Nancy,
Do you bind the fancy so?
Narcissi in autumn
Picking narcissi in the Autumn breaks
A pattern . . . makes awry
The symmetry of the seasons
We set our calendars by;
Takes away an accent, a design,
A known perfection;
Severing the intimate connection
Between the interlocking pieces of our days;
Altering some necessary line,
Some potent phrase
Of Winter, or of Spring:
Making the shaken year an unfamiliar thing.
Dorothea Spears
Native Paths
(Portuguese East Africa)
Coconut palm, and baobab, and night…
A full moon flooding the grove with deceptive light:
Hidden insects chanting their nightly psalm
While darkness runs to cover behind each palm.
…The shadows lengthen into infinity…
Hush! Cower low in the quivering grass!
Along this winding way the trinity
Of the ages, merged in one, forever pass:
Today… Tomorrow…Yesterday… are one
The ageless ghost of Time goes ever on,
Unseen… unheard… moving the dusky pawns
Across the chequered squares of nights and dawns
Fighting his battles with consummate skill,
Checking the king of black and white at will.
…Cower low… Fate is sinister here…
The ebon figures, shod with awful fear,
Creep through life from dark to haunted dark,
From shadow into shadow, leave no mark:
Son follows sire and, passing, leaves no trace
Upon the naked majesty of this lone place –
Save where these paths in questing terror wind
Binding the years ahead and countless years behind.
Nativity
Far had I wandered over land and sea
Seeking and seeking for the Son of God,
Longing to witness His nativity,
Searching the paths where long ago He trod
And finding nothing there but history
And lovely tales to spin a hope upon:
Alas, the Presence and mystery
Had vanished, and the peace of God was gone.
And as I meditated in deep grief
That He was not where erstwhile He had been
There came a voice across my unbelief-
O Traveller, turn your eyes within, within!
And lo, within my heart’s prepared shrine
The eyes of Christ were smiling into mine.
NEIGHBOURS
What do they talk about when they meet
Over the top of the high brick wall.
The scarlet rose on your side
The tall sweet peas on mine
As Spring and Summer and fall
Succeed each other in the year's design.
Does each rose as it comes and goes
Tell your Border how my garden grows,
Or laugh a little, kindly, at you and me?
I see them nodding to each other
Whenever the wind blows
(And that is almost every day
Where the Solent slips to the sea)
But what do they say, I wonder?
Now it is nearly November, and ever since June
Successive blooms have bowed
In friendly fashion ever the weathered bricks,
Beautiful, fragrant, proud.
They have seen so many blossoms
Bloom, and pass to be replaced
By other flower faces; seen the grass
And trees altering their range of greens
As the seasons change and pause and pass.
And will your rose miss my sweet peas
When the first frost brings them to their knees?
Dorothea Spears
Nella Via Vecchi, Perugia
Every morning I walk along this street.
I may not understand what the people say
But I can understand the flowers I meet
And pass the time with, smiling, day and day,
Blossom tree and tulip and daffodil,
English lilac, and stocks, and pansy faces.
And then the iris, and after, the roses spill
Their colour and scent from unexpected places
Along my way to the halls of learning where
Myself and fellow foreigners aspire
To conquer the Bella lingua, trace to its lair
The spirit of Italy, earth and water and fire.
People struggle with pronouns, conjunctions, verbs
But pictures and music and flowers need no words.
Never quite the same
Nothing is ever quite the same twice.
No word is complete in itself, nor any note
Of music sung or played or heard, nor day,
Nor hour, nor moment . . . nor the song of a bird:
And certainly not people, certainly not
An individual subject to the play
Of ambient energy and ray and thought:
Every image is impinged upon
By other images, unsought and caught,
And what it says to us today and here
And now and in this set of circumstances
It may not say to us tomorrow.
Because no thing is complete in itself: no thing
But is a changing synthesis between
Beholder and beheld, hearer and heard,
And time and place and circumstance unforeseen,
And the fall of the dice . . .
Nothing is ever quite the same twice.
Dorothea Spears
Never say always
Always and never are long words.
We should be careful how we say
Always and never
When we really only mean today.
Always and never are strong words
With power to bind or serve:
They are words with which to play.
Take care . . . take care
How you flight them through the air
Lest they go forth and slay.
Dorothea Spears
New days, new ways
The things we want to say to-day
Will not confine themselves in measured lines
And metered rhymes the way
They used to do in other times.
Old bottles will not hold the new wine:
The old colours and designs
And forms cannot portray
What modern artists would convey.
Is it that our thought
Is so much deeper, broader, higher
That it can only be caught by gods
And bought by fire?
And yet -
The same old acorn holds the oak;
The stars their courses run,
And suns rise and set
As they have always done,
And night wears the same cloak
Dorothea Spears
New England Fall
(Vermont, 1963)
The palette Nature uses on these hills
The colours Nature chooses, mixes, spills!
What mortal mind would think to juxtapose
These vibrant notes, what mortal could transpose
Andante summer with its gravely green
And flowing movement, gracious and serene
To Autumn's singing scherzo when the mutes
Are laid aside and all the soaring flutes
And fiddles in a tutti passage cry
In notes of vibrant colour rising high
And higher to a sky of cold blue
In passionate crescendo, hue on hue
And hill on hill of flaming prismed light.
Oh Sun, sink softly now; come gently, Night.
That heart and head forever may recall
The memory of this New England fall.
Dorothea Spears
New Fashion
Our beautiful, beloved Cape
Is being cut to a different shape:
We must wear it so, or go
In search of another that will not smother
The innate love we have for the mother
Of many children, who bade them grow
Together, and for the love of the land
To serve, to share, and to understand?
The coat of many colours is rent –
Can we who have worn it, be content
With the new untraditional way
Design decrees we must follow today?
Airlie Close
Constantia C.P.
New Tenant
But yesterday, it seemed that Summer’s lease
Upon the land had many a day to run.
Her arrogant overseer, the lordly Sun,
Proclaimed no imminent intent to cease
Imperious demands for Earth’s increase:
Such flowering and fruiting to be done,
It seemed, before a respite could be won!
And Summer countenanced no rash caprice.
But suddenly, as if ‘twere overnight,
The great Sun’s power has waned: before his face
The clouds play hide-and-seek; the wild leaves race;
And Summer’s retinue has taken flight.
Earth’s tempo slows, as Autumn storms the place
And splashes colour, with reckless delight!
Night on the Karroo
Wearied by suns that are too bright,
Bruised by the violence of light
The tired earth lays its aching head
Against the bosom of night.
And so is comforted.
Oh, agony of tortured earth
Uneased by rain…
Oh, agony of tortured mind whose eyes
No tears can find
To alleviate the unendurable pain…
Be kind to them, dark skies.
And stars be kind.
Veritas
Constantia C.P
Night Walker
How quickly clouds arise . . . Stars are bright
And vividly real and intimate, night after night
The friendly eyes of universe revealed.
Then suddenly . . . suddenly heaven is concealed
And all the steady world of stars hidden.
Doubt drifts in across the brows, unbidden.
The claustrophobic spirit beats in vain
Against the creeping, closing walls of pain
And yet, within some central self, is sure
The hidden verities must still endure,
Knowing that every cloud that hides the sky
Is born of earth, not heaven, and passes by
Dorothea Spears
Nights Of Cape November
These are the evenings that my heart remembers,
Soft, but not cloying, infinitely still
When all the ghosts of all the dead Novembers
In passionate fragrance through the night distill;
With honeysuckle, broom and privet laden,
And scent of roses, perishingly sweet,
The earth’s deep incense to the Blessed Maiden,
And youth’s first love, surpassing pure and fleet.
Like waves the silent fragrance surges round
To bear me upwards on perfumed tide,
To carry me, I know not whither-bound
To what dim Lethe, what Avalon, to bide.
Across the world, nostalgic, I remember
The still and perfumed nights of Cape November.
No Autumn in the Cape
He said there is not Autumn in the Cape.
Yet day-long Autumn nudges me to say
“Look quickly. Look! For I shall be away
So soon when blustering Winter comes to rape.
With boisterous breath from which is no escape!”
The smoke from the leaves that were beauty yesterday
Hangs in the air like incense when men pray…
Lines gold and scarlet line the valley shape.
Constantia knows Autumn, and Tokai,
She interrupts the days that I have planned
A score of times to seize my willing hand
And bid me share her ecstasy, her high
Wild ecstasy that goes so swiftly by –
But city dwellers would not understand.
24.6.53
No Beaulieu Now
Is there a corner in the world to-day
Wherein a man can say “I am secure”?
Within this changing world can he be sure
Of any value fashioned out of clay
Although he call it granite? Come what may
While manifested matter may immure
Is there a single mould that must endure
Beyond Atlantis, when the blind betray?
How vain is man, indeed, who boasts in fight
Or trusts in flight or fancies flesh immortal.
Who thinks to check and mate relentless Fate.
Now sanctuary is profaned by might.
Now safety sleeps behind no earthly portal:
And only Heaven is inviolate.
(Beaulieu was one of the Abbeys where once men could find inviolable asylum – a sanctuary.
10.2.61
No Bells in England
The Bells – the bells of England – they are dumb.
Round all the shires the spires in silence pout.
The joyous bells, the bells that bade men come
From valleys miles away, no more ring out
The call to prayer, nor waft the passing soul,
Nor hymn the bridal pair: each iron tongue
Hangs silent… Better so … since now their toll
Can tell but terror, let them rest unrung.
Poor bells… poor silent bells that, wrought for praise,
Must hold their tongues: sad hills that may not know
The dear familiar sound, except to warn
Of alien feet upon their English ways…
Be silent, then ye brazen throats…But oh!
The ghostly silence of the sabbath morn!
No Common Day
This life's no common day.
Events are vast, and moving fast
To some denouement not so far
And he who understands
The present and the future and the past
Can take tomorrow in his hands
And enter it with open eyes at last.
Dorothea Spears
5.7.61
No Escape from Humanity
It's no use. It's no use at all.
I thought to ride the winged steed of the storm,
To take at a single leap the mountain wall
And jump the ocean, forgetting the common form.
I thought to ride for the space of a furious night
Across the windswept leagues of the rugged sky,
Drunk with the glorious ecstasy of flight,
And watch the whirling planet hurtle by
But now I know there's no escape from the pain
Of the common Body I share with my fellow men
And while one suffers I seek to fly in vain
And am drawn to earth again and again and again.
It's no use. It's no use at all:
There's no escape from the common Body’s call
Dorothea Spears
No Heel Taps?
Some men may drink of power and still be sane
For some there are can carry liquor well,
While some become innocuous and inane,
But some are dangerous: and who can tell,
Without experiment, how each reacts?
Of him who turns aggressive and would force
His own opinions on the world of facts
Beware, lest the dementia runs its course
And you who filled and still refill his glass
Yourself dare not oppose the inebriate will
That bids you to your knees when he would pass,
Becoming ruder as he drinks his fill.
Before you let a fellow quaff it quicker
Be sure he has a head to carry liquor.
No Imminent Millennium
There is no hope, men being as they are,
Enslaved by transient happiness and sorrow,
Illumined by no constant guiding star,
That the Millennium will be drawn tomorrow.
There is no hope, men being as they seem
Self-seeking and a prey to greed and fear
(Though more and more have glimpsed the greater dream)
That peace and brotherhood are very near.
There is no hope of synthesis while men
Pursue the goal of separation still:
Regardless of experience raise again
Old barriers in their arrogant self-will.
But here’s the question we must face today −
Proceed we toward fulfillment, or away?
Dorothea Spears
No Loneliness
To listen to beautiful music, for some, is prayer.
And there are some who cannot see a flower
Opening to perfection but the Power
That fashioned it is manifested there.
All things but serve to make them more aware
Of Him in Whom they live Whose earthly dower,
Inherited, makes rich each passing hour,
Forever conscious of the Life they share.
For such Communion is no rare sacrament.
They eat and drink of Him by day and night,
Though they may fill no fane with urgent pleas.
With poverty or wealth they are content
And tear is powerless to dim their light;
Life holds no loneliness for such as these.
Dorothea Spears
No Magic
Not now . . not here, no longer . . .
No place in space today
For the young of heart, the dreamer
Who cannot pay his way.
Our babes are tricked and torn
From Fairyland at birth,
And Samson's early shorn,
Conditioned to Mammon's earth.
Deterred the unheard bird,
The bluebird, hastened the weaning,
And lost the hidden word
That gave the world a meaning.
We barter the beauty unspoken.
The token, for what can be said;
And baffled, we blunder, are broken.
And wonder that wonder has fled.
Dorothea Spears
No Songs Now
I fashioned a sanctuary out of silence
And darkness and unbonded time,
Between the third mile post and the dawn,
A refuge from all danger and all anger,
A shelter from the day
With space in time to dream and meditate, and pray,
And listen…
It was here I met my Muse, and heard
The songs, and sought to capture them in words
To share with other men
Before they were distilled in space again,
Assured of solitude to match her mood.
Alas! I cannot keep at bay
These latest supplants. Too many seek
A sanctuary now,
And I cannot escape their deep despair
Pressing against the very air
I breathe grieving for their despair.
How can I be at peace? How
Can I fashion a sanctuary now?
Too many tragedies in this Group Area,
My brother’s blood is crying from the ground
He cannot own.
The wheel goes round and round.
And how can I atone
For all these Mrs Mapheeles and Mrs Sisulus
Who will not leave me alone?
There is nothing that I can do for their sake,
Who gave my heart to this country…to break.
“Veritas”
Constantia, C.P.
No Tears
(For Eileen Popkiss. Hon Secretary C.T.Deaf Association, Council for the Aging, etc,etc)
I have no tears to shed for you, my friend;
Only a thanksgiving that the cold
Of winter will not find you growing old
Alone, and that you will not have to bend
Your independent spirit to depend.
For you would rather always give than hold.
And serve than be served, being cast in that mould.
You were permitted to serve to day’s end.
Fulfilment holds no tragedy. Only those
Who have not earned the liberty of death
Should fear the tolling of its friendly knell;
Never the bud fulfilled in the blown rose;
Never the life fulfilled by the spent breath.
No tears to shed… farewell, old friend. Fare well!
Veritas, Constantia, C.P.
No time to spare
“Take from seventy years a score.
It only leaves me fifty more
And fifty years are little room”
He said. “to look at things in bloom.”
But what when three score years are spent
Of all the years that life has lent?
Then surely it were waste to sleep
On nights like this, and fail to keep
The tryst with winter's silver moon
That we must bid farewell so soon,
Or miss on this, or any day
A breath of beauty by the way.
There is not any time to spare
Upon an earth so fair, so fair -
So many beautiful things to see
Before, for us, they cease to be.
Dorothea Spears
Nor’ West Wind
Two nights I heard him creeping
Before the dawn was grey,
When all the rest were sleeping…
He came to spy the way…
Trying all the latches
To find where he could pry;
Fingering the catches –
I heard him going by.
But last night he came boldly,
Came shouting down the lane,
Blowing long and coldly,
And brought the Winter rain!
The brown leaves flew before them:
He whirled them round and round
And into tatters tore them
Before they reached the ground.
They danced upon them madly,
And whipped the naked trees
And through them dirged most sadly
In mock solemnities.
He tore around the houses
Shouting in ghoulish glee,
The Master of Carouses
A king of Revelry:
The tiring of his rumbling
With consequential fuss
He took the rain off, grumbling
But Winter he left with us.
“Dawn” Silwood Road,
Rondebosch Cape.
Northwest Wind In my Garden
I lie and listen to the ruthless wind
Go trampling through my garden, and I know
That all the startled plants are bending low,
Not having known a touch that was unkind.
The wind is pitiless, and cold, and blind
To fragile beauty: with relentless blow
He levels all. And I who love them so
Can only shelter them within my mind.
I wonder if the flowers wonder why,
As low they crouch, dishevelled and afraid,
The one who nursed and loved them has betrayed?
Small stocks and roses… do they know that I
Am helpless too, before this renegade
That shouts his triumph to the shaken sky?
Cape Times
Leader Column
Nostalgia (A South African in London)
Rain. And Fog. The air is thick
With breath, an old pelt.
My saturated soul is sick
For the arid, open veld.
People…streets…without interlude…
Noise, and a blaze of light:
God! For the speckles solitude
And the silent, star-strewn night!
Sick am I of this man-made world.
Yea, I am sick to death
For leagues of sunlight veld unfurled,
And God’s untainted breath.
London is rich and culture proud –
I lust for a leaner land;
For a stretch of sky without a cloud
And the sculping of God’s hand.
Here lanes at dawn are sweet with dew –
But I would give it all
For a sight of the old drought-struck Karroo
And the smell of a kaffir kraal!
Not A Fashionable Poet
It is not up-to-date today, to write
Of beauty, or to dip a spleenless pen
In unadulterated woodland glen
Or flower-starred meadow lush with Spring’s delight.
It is more fashionable to indite
On ode (unrhymed) to pigs in dungy den,
Likening them unto one’s fellow men;
Subverting beauty’s image, blackening white.
Yet seasons with their pageantry stream by,
And clouds of pearl still dapple heaven’s blue –
Let it be mine to let the whole world know it!
Why sing of dung when glory’s in the sky,
Or ugliness when beauty is as true?
Thank God, I am not a fashionable poet!
Not Enough
Loving you is not enough.
The sweet intoxication of your presence, the delight
Of brief at-one-ment when the flight
Of time is lost in all eternity and night
And day are indivisible
Is not enough.
If I would understand you I must learn
Your language. I must learn
To pierce the symbol where your thought has stirred
Creatively the elements, if I am to discern
The meaning of the beauty of the word.
For what is all the universe but this
The manifested Word of the Beloved?
And we miss
The meaning when we are contented with the kiss.
Veritas, Constantia
Not on De Waal Drive
Now God be thanked I live in a place
Where I can look the moon in the face,
Where I can lave in silvery light,
And sleep in the naked arms of night.
And give us to keep as long as we can
This place from the depredations of man
Who thinks, with gold, and a wink and a nod,
That he can do anything better than God.
Dorothea Spears
Not Ready Yet
“Too soon! Too, soon!" the poplars cry. Alas, .
We are not ready yet to face the spring,
Too soon! Too soon for winter noons to pass
And bring again this burst of blossoming!”
Still bare they stand against the rising tide
Beside the verdant oak, the budding plane,
The blossom tree,, that, vestured like a bride,
Accepts the sun's embrace nor wits of wane.
I wonder is it faith that fails you, friends,
Or courage. or a weariness not yet
Grown rested would delay this life that bends
With unrelenting hands the sap till set?
I, too . . . . I, too, my poplars. Spring is here
Too Soon, too eagerly, this thirsty year.
Dorothea Spears.
Not Still Enough
We are not still enough. We have forgot,
Amongst the intersecting paths of space,
The way that leads us to that silent spot
Where no sound is, where discord enters not.
And searching vainly in life’s polyglot
We find no tongue to give us clue or trace;
Only we sense in every baffled face
A like desire for that so vital spot.
But once the maze of time and discord through,
Emerging from that silence, every light
The sum of colour is. Our sharpened sight
Perceives all beauty with a vision new.
In every man we glimpse the infinite
And know, for one brief moment, false from true.
Nothing
Nothing ends in nothing:
Every word spoken,
Every faith broken,
Everything remembered or forgot
Leaves a mark on the face
Of time or space.
Nothing is not
Indelible there in the air
Or the power of the hour.
The scent of The rose
Bud, that blows
And glows and dies,
Love that sighs, and expires,
Passionate embrace,
Frosts and fires and desires
Leave their trace:
And curse and praise
And the ways of nights and days
Time betrays.
Nothing ends in nothing
But nothing is nothing
Dorothea Spears
Nothing Is Ever Quite the Same Twice
Nothing is ever quite the same twice.
No word is complete in itself, nor any note
Of music written or played or heard, nor day
Nor hour, nor moment…nor the song of a bird:
And certainly not people, certainly not
An individual, subject to the play
Of ambient energies and rays and thought.
Every image is impinged upon
By other images caught and though and what it says
To today and here and now
And in this set of circumstances;
It may not say to us at all tomorrow
Because no thing is complete in itself: no thing
But is a changing synthesis between
Beholder and beheld, hearer and heard
And time and place and circumstance, unforeseen
And the fall of the dice.
Airlie Close
Constantia, C.P.
November In The Cape
November in the Cape – the month of roses,
When every garden plot is glorified:
The humblest corner suddenly discloses
A wealth of dazzling, unsuspected pride.
The roses to the earth their riches fling
In joyous, passionate abandonment
Until the baffled airs vibrate and sing
In harmonies of colour and scent.
November in the Cape – O Heart, be still!
In notes of austere white and glowing flame
The roses set the tingling air a-thrill
In cadences defying mortal name.
Conducted by the Arch-musicians hand
A symphony of colour sweeps the land!
Now Christmas Comes Apace
Now Christmas comes apace. O Heart, be gay!
All nature hymns the advent of this birth.
The birds are carolling with joyous mirth;
The trees, full-leaved, with rustling zephyrs play
And blossom incense fills the phials of day.
Here is no freezing wind, no winter dearth,
But generous sunshine flooding verdant earth:
Come, let us haste to join the roundelay!
In northern climes the cold men fan the ember
To keep alive its artificial glow:
We revel in the sun, and scarce remember
To render thanks to Him who made it so,
To God, who gives us roses in December
When half the world is covered deep in snow.
Now I know it’s Autumn
Now I know it's Autumn! Hill to hill
The lazy valley's haunted with the haze.
The pungent Autumn scent, nostalgic, still,
Of bonfires burning up the summer days.
Along the valley stretch the funeral pyres
Dissolving into smoke the beauty past.
Across the valley burn the Autumn fires
Of crumpled memories that cannot last;
The faded summer days, discarded flowers,
The fallen leaves of green and brown and gold
And red and yellow; all the faded hours,
Whose ashes will be scattered, growing cold.
How wise, how wise to tidy up the heart
Before the urgent winds of winter start.
Dorothea Spears
Now Is My Heart Indeed a Bird of Joy
Now is my heart indeed a bird of Joy
That spreads it wings before thee
And winging ever higher sings
How I adore thee!
Now am I enrobed with vesture bright
You strengthen and restore me
Till my whole being makes reply
How I adore thee!
They peace envelopes me: they love enfolds…
Be gentle, I implore Thee
For I am overwhelmed, my Lord…
How I adore Thee!
Nyakatsapa
Still… As Still – as still as death…so still
That all the laden valley seems to hold
Some mystic secret sacredly untold
And guarded by the silent circling hill.
Still… Tremendous silence stoops to fill
The vale: the silence burnished gold
Of sunlight seems a plotter in some old
Mysterious secret unrevealed… Still.
Still… Eternal silence seals the place
Unchallenged and immutable. Who knows
The secret of the valley and the hill?
While just without the valley by a pace
The restless world of men still comes and goes
With noisy tread, But here it’s still …It’s Still.