R.I.P.
When I no longer hear the laughter lilting in a stream:
Nor flowers singing in the garden when I pass
When I no longer find a shelter in a dream
Nor make a magic carpet of mown grass:
When I can trace no minarets of worship in a cloud.
Nor touch the green and healing hand of a happy tree:
When I forget my kinship with the scurviest crowd -
Quickly, sew a shroud and bury me.
Dorothea Spears
Race
I thought we had laid this ghost to rest
Long since, the ghost of the hidden gene
Biding its time unheard, unseen.
Till men go riding as to a quest,
To track it through the generations
And bring it boldly to contest
The right of men to homes and nations.
But lo . . . the ghost escape's the tomb
To spread again defenceless fear.
Dark against the gathering gloom
I saw its shadow hovering here.
Dorothea Spears
Race Memory
Little bird, why do you wake in the quiet night
To murmur over and over your scant tune?
Know you foreboding, too? Or does the potent white
Insistent radiance of the pagan moon
Awake uneasy ecstasies of unremembered flight
In your heart , as in mine?
Rain
Rain on the grass – pearls in a setting of jade.
Rain in the garden : pools where the pixies wade,
Rain in the flower cups for fairies’ tea.
Rain in the ground for the roots of the thirsty tree;
To melt the frozen breasts where the snow has lain,
And kiss dead lips to life. Thank God for rain.
Rainbow
This morning
Without any warning
I came face to face
With a rainbow adorning
The thunderous sky
That hid the mountain’s place,
Arching the valley
Where the vineyards burn
And oaks begin to turn
As Autumn stages her accustomed sally,
Where snowy egrets flow
In low and level flight
Unmindful of the sight:
A perfect bow
Dissecting unity to show
The beauty of all light,
By sun and season brought to birth –
A seven-fold arch. Could it not span
(If we could read the plan)
The distance between Heaven and Earth,
And God and man?
Veritas
Constantia, C.P
Rainbows
The child soon loses Beauty's key, they say −
Experience teaches me it is not so.
A sudden rainbow's lovelier today
Than in the innocence of long ago.
And after half a century of earth
Its wonder has the power to wake in me
An inner jubilance of singing mirth,
A consciousness of immortality
I trace the covenantal arch and find
The fabled treasure-trove, the pot of gold,
The hidden symbol buried in the mind
Where light reveals the secret sevenfold.
Who walks the earth with wisdom in his eyes
Finds rainbows leading him to wider skies!
Dorothea Spears
Raking Leaves
Raking leaves is a task that likes me well.
In mellow autumn weather, hazy now
The laggard sun has grown too old and lazy
To climb to the top of the sky at high noon
To spy what sort of moon is standing by.
I wait, first, for a friendly wind to blow
And sweep the leaves in heaps: it’s easier so,
And even then I fear I’m slow because
Every now and again I have to pause
To see some special leaf some special tree
Has made a masterpiece of … like the plane’s,
A foot across (or nearly), patterned veins
Drawing another tree to fit their shape;
And such wealth of colour! I have found
Long and narrow peach leaves on the ground
As yellow flushed with rose as the peach that grows
On the branch above when summer is in love.
Small hawthorn leaves have brilliant things to say
But Pride-of-India is more bright, more gay…
As if these aren’t enough, from over the wall
Tall eucalyptus curtsies and let’s fall
A fragrant offering to scent them all!
Yes, raking leaves is a happy thing to do
An Autumn day in May …won’t you come too?
Airlie Close
Constantia C.P.
Rather Strange
(Mr. Erasmus yesterday said the Government is considering the reduction of voting age to 18)
They won’t allow our sons to marry
Till one and twenty years they carry
Without consent of Father.
But would let them run the State
When there are only ten plus eight –
Isn’t it strange, rather?
Cape Times
11.9.52
Realisation
I watch my lone little figure walking
Alone the road under a muted moon
Half a world away from the world I know,
The world of every day, where it is noon.
I feel my tiny figure stop… and go…
My little five foot five of flesh and bone
And blood walking along the world alone,
Unlonely, unafraid, the transient ghost
Unimpressed by time and space.
I marvel, watching me,
An infinitesimal atom of being pressed
Against the bosom of earth by an unseen hand,
Walking along the earth so confidently
In unison with the road and the moon and the trees
Thousands of miles from a familiar land
So far and suddenly I understand
Infinitesimal though this be.
Its consciousness is the consciousness of the whole.
The breath of the universe, the breath of my soul,
And time a fragment of eternit
Portland, Ore, USA
August 1, 1963
Reason for Treason?
Here is a scholar and a gentleman.
He can deal with problems that involve
The Higher Mathematics, He can think
With clarity and logic, and resolve
The physical to its component parts,
Or write a poem, preach a sermon, paint
A masterpiece or win a case at law
But if he be a sinner or a saint
We dare not sup with him, the erudite,
Because his skin is black and ours is white.
And here's a puzzled woman, straight from the kraal,
Unlettered and unlearned. We place our young
Within her "savage" arms without a qualm
And that first vital five-year span is sung
To primitive lullabies. Her hands prepare
The food we eat. She passes in and out
Our houses and our lives and has a share
in our most intimate homes. Without a doubt
This is the apotheosis of reason.
To doubt it (in South Africa) were treason.
Recognition
This is that I deem the
chiefest grace
That I can turn a stone and start a wing,
That mine is no estranged unhappy face
To miss the daily many-splendored thing.
For surely Jacob’s
leader's pitched between
The Cape and Heaven on the common way,
And Christ upon the waters may be seen,
Not of Genasserat but Zeekoe Vlei.
No single time or place
is set apart
For in no distant stable Christ is born:
The angels sing their
carols in my heart
Ana in my field He plucks and eats the corn
This is that I deem the chiefest grace -
That I can speak with Him in any place.
DOROTHEA SPEARS
Records
Searching old records for the one’s to keep
Successive lives are crumbled to dust,
There were so many deaths, why can’t I trust
Each night’s dissembling death that leads to sleep?
Re-reading volumes for the missing sheet
No option but to sort the dusty shelves,
Replace the layers of discarded selves
And set the record-player to repeat.
The mind smooths out the brown-stained folds of time
The gaps between lend meaning to the words,
My heart responds in harmonising thirds
And music long unheard provokes new rhyme.
In trust renewed I watch as colours gleam,
How like a hooky rug a life can seem.
( A Hooky rug is made from pieces of wool or “old rags” in a random assortment of colours which are pulled through the canvas with a hook; in the north of England it can also be known as a “clippy rug”.)
Reflection
See. the moon has fallen into the pool!
And there she lies imprisoned while the light
Creeps curiously across the valley, cool
And still from her unpassioned tryst with night.
Here is a fascinating thought to find
Within one's pool, this pallid prisoned guest
This dweller of the skies! It sets the mind
A-travel on the everlasting quest.
The moon that's held within this pale reflection,
Does she believe reality is here?
Has separation lost the recollection
Of her identity, in sudden fear?
As you and I look round this earth and feel
Ourselves alone and these reflections real.
REFLECTION
Say is it truth, my heart,
or is it lies
That God is impotent when Beauty dies?
*
Beauty is one of God’s names, and thus a
portal
Through which men reach him. Beauty is immortal.
But her reflection (which is all men see
On earth) can easily distorted be
Since man may mar the mirror that reveals
His glimpse of God, till Truth and Beauty reels.
Each man’s a looking glass where each man sees
Himself and God and shapes his verities.
Each
man’s a glass and all the world for each
Is limited by his potential reach . . .
The
attributes of God nor change nor pass
But man can shatter His Image in his glass.
Reflection of Trinity
Myself a tiny replica God
And of creation…
The Father, Spirit, thinking into form
The Universe in finite time and space
Through unimaginable stress and storm,
The Holy Ghost, this phantom of Himself
In which we live and move and have our being
And think and act as ghost within a Ghost.
The kingdoms of creation merge in me
As in the Universe
And while I animate them they have life
As has the Universe indwelt by God.
My bones are mountains and the bones of earth
Clad by the verdant muscles, tissue, flesh:
The living blood goes coursing through my heart
And all my animal organs play their part
Beneath the guidance of the mind of man
Which should rule all the kingdoms of my world.
It is the story told in Genesis,
A story I have been familiar with
Since youth, but never understood till now,
As I had never really understood
The mission of the Son, the soul, the bridge
Between the Father and the Holy Ghost
Which, recognised, illuminates the Word
And all the words and all the lives made One.
The triple Unity, the Father, Son
And Holy Ghost, the Spirit, soul and form.
Refuge
This I remember when your name is spoken
In clamorous hall or in tumultuous street:
Quiet woodlands, and in the low, unbroken
Murmuring of small streams, and the sweet
And comfortable smell of crumpled grass;
And your still voice, as intimate as the rain
Soft falling through white fog; and dreams that pass,
Being too beautiful, and so remain.
Now your name has an echo: like a bell
It calls a world to worship. I bow not,
Knowing your name no cymbal, but a spell –
An Open Sesame, still unforgot.
Your name, o’erheard in hall or noisy mart,
Unlocks a sanctuary in my heart.
Reincarnation
This present life is but a passing day
Upon the travel of the searching soul;
A single mile upon an unseen way
That leads to an unfathomable goal;
(With yesterday cheques to cash and debts to pay,
Forgot, but tallied on some secret scroll.)
A scene from some uncomprehended play;
A fragment from a vast and vital whole.
Today is made of yesterday and makes
Tomorrow, and without the days before
And after, or which every day partakes
Is unfulfilled, unfinished. Death’s a door
That separates our days of lives and breaks
Our conscious continuity … no more.
“Veritas”
Constantia, C.P.
Remembering
I have been reading again the words you wrote
More than a third of a century ago;
It doesn’t seem so long. You used to quote
From poets new and old; you used to know
So many things, remembering with ease
The Latin and the Greek, remembering too
The trifles that you knew were sure to please-
The first anemone, the gentian's blue.
And I have but to close my eyes to hear
Again your lovely low unhurried voice
Rejoicing in the now and new and near
Or bringing to life dead Carthages and Troys.
They told me, Heraclitus . . . Oh, my friend!
We too out-talked the sun! Was this the end?
Dorothea Spears.
22.2.1967
Reminder
This morning I was fortunate to rise
When Dawn was tentatively touching eastern skies
With delicate fingers, silhouetting the line
Of dark horizon . . . distant hill and spreading stone pine
Deep-etched in black against the waxing light
That imperceptibly supplanted waning night.
The moon, late risen being old,
Was a phantom circle in a crescent of gold:
Two lingering stars still gleamed against the veil
Of transitory darkness slowly growing pale:
And such a hush enveloped birthing day
That I was fain to stay my breathing, too,
Lest I should blow the magic of the hour away . . .
'Then the cock crew
And I, like Peter, could have wept to know
How often we betray His love and let His beauty go.
Dorothea Spears
Renunciation’s Matin and Vesper
Every morning when the gold sun rises
And all the sleeping dew-drops on the grass surprises
To sudden shining,
And lights the silver lining
Of startled clouds, and with a pure, refining
Fire purges my heart of all its old repining
And old desire –
Then can I dream of you as one long dead,
In gentle beauty picturing your lonely head
While passion sleeps upon her muted lyre.
But in the evening, when the shadows darken
And for His goodnight whisper all God’s wee things hearken,
Softly bending
For blessing at Day’s ending;
While in the West the Sun’s last rays are spending –
Dear, the need of you with pain in my heart is rending,
And the old fear –
For then I know you living, loving true,
And all my longing soul goes out in search of you;
And passion, waking, cries to feel you near.
Dorothea Graham Botha
“Penarth” Broad Walk
Stratford -on – Avon.
Repentance
If by some vast oblation we could shrive
The sinning years to save the soul alive;
Could purge and purify the spent desire
Of purpose in some penitential fire –
Would we not gladly take the martyr’s vow?
But not so swiftly can mankind atone
The centuries or reap the harvests sown.
There is karma that must be fulfilled.
Till Cain is conquered Abel will be killed.
14.8.63
Republican Rhymes Of The Times –
Gene
All because of a gene, my friend,
All because of a gene –
And what do you think will be the end
Of you and me and the dean?
I may be trustier than you
But you must never be seen
With me on a bicycle made for two –
And all because of gene. (Chorus)
My I.Q. may out rate you’re your pride;
My house may be more clean,
But you must not drink tea inside –
And all because of a gene. (Chorus)
I’ll never be a citizen, true,
Though worthy and learned and keen,
Or go to the polls to vote with you –
And all because of a gene. (Chorus)
I may not claim the same rapport
Nor use the same latrine
Nor enter a concert through your door –
And all because of a gene. (Chorus)
I may not go… I may not stay…
I may not even be
Unless the government says “O.K.” –
A……b……..g….
All because of a gene, my friend,
All because of a gene –
And what do you think will be the end
Of you and me and the dean?
Airlie Close
Constantia. C.P.
Requiescat (J.C.S.)
We do not grudge you rest. See, here are flowers,
And laurel wreaths, but never one of rue.
For four-score years this might heart was ours
While you accomplished what you came to do.
This heart was ours, South Africa’s great son.
With vision keen the path to fame you trod,
Forgetting not, or friend or foe were won,
Your greater loyalty – a son of God.
And we, who still must bear the battle’s brunt,
Will find our guidance in that wider view;
With greater tolerance the future front,
And pledge ourselves to God and man anew,
And to South Africa, that we may find
And fill our part within the Whole, Mankind.
Responsibility
You and I - we know
That violence begets
More violence. We know,
But we forget,
That each uncharitable thought
We think, each bitter word
We speak is caught
Although unseen, unheard,
Into the unforgiving air
That all men breathe,
That all men share.
Dorothea Spears
30.10.1973
Return
Time and distance are strange and unrevealing
And inaccurate measurements to measure thought
And life and love and feeling. We said goodbye
Thousands of miles and eighteen months away
(What volumes of water must have flowed under the bridge!)
But looking in your eyes it was yesterday.
Oh, time and distance are liars when they are set
To measure friendship. The heart doesn’t forget.
Dorothea Spears
Revelation
(Lines Born at Timberlawn, Constantia)
Sometimes the old, familiar beauty sings
A new song
And suddenly seizes the observer in
A passionate embrace
That leaves the heart breathless.
It is as if the spirit of the scene
Lays hold of his spirit.
Illuminating him, as love illuminates a known face.
And suddenly he knowns that he and beauty
Are one – and deathless.
Rich Autumn
The Autumn sings the swan song of the year
Because she knows that Winter’s time is near.
The soft and gentle rain is weeping with sorrow
Because she knows the secret of tomorrow.
But in between the sun is bursting with laughter
Because he knows the secret of what comes after.
The clouds grow richer with the dying day,
And with the Autumn all the leaves go gay.
O singing colour, swelling to perfection!
O beautiful death that ends in resurrection!
I love the
deeper notes that Autumn knows.
And leaves are lovely when the swallow goes.
Rich
If my life’s sun should set today
To never rise again;
If all my skies were turned to grey
And clouded o’er with pain:
Though you should steal all joy from me
One thing is still mine own –
You cannot take the memory
Of beauty I have known.
Then sun or shade, no matter which
Shall claim Tomorrow’s way,
I am imperishably rich
While I have yesterday.
Rocks At Knysna Heads
Rocks of warm burnt umber
on mossy pedestals of redder brown
jagged rocks, and rocks with teeth, that slumber down
through summer days, but even slumbering frown,
mocking the opalescent seas
that seek the sheltered ease
Of Knysna’s blue lagoon, flecking with white
the jade-blue waters in their lambent flight.
But when the tempest blows – ah, then they rouse
and bare their snarling teeth in search of prey,
and show their fangs, and thundering carouse,
drenching the startled hills in frightened spray!
Ruins
If I am cognizant, when I have left this dwelling place
of so familiar clay
forever, to wander through the unceiled halls of space,
how walls once fair
are crumbling to decay –
shall I not care?
If I should be aware
how these two eyes, the lights of this abode,
the casements through which I have gazed on beauty’s face
a life of years,
are naked portals where the worms corrode –
how these two ears
that gave me fiddle’s singing,
bird song,
and your voice speaking my name,
are gates where maggots throng –
And this mute mouth
Through which my words to you went in and out,
now leaping and now lame
with bringing
too great weight of love and doubt,
is stuffed with vermin clinging –
oh, shall I not know shame?
If I can apprehend,
after my tenure here has come to an end,
how every orifice through which my senses sped
on joyous mission is become a lane
corruption-desecrate, whence worms are led
to that deserted fane
where once this sovereign brain
held court – will it not cause me pain?
Oh, shall I see
and comprehend this sacrilege with equanimity?
For even now I could not note without a sigh
Some man-made dwelling where I had been happy once
In ruins, passing by.