Synapse - Antjie Krog

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darned Harris Tweed jacket like the one you’d

      find in Pa’s winter trunk I walk behind him

      and my eyes are glued to the too-big jacket shoulders:

      what if this man was my father what if it was his fingers

      fumbling with the plastic bag under his arm

      what if my father was black and old and full of integrity

      surrendering to his worn-out muscles

      his polished shoes on their way to my mother exhausted

      somewhere in an outside room actually I should

      put my hand on his back and say: go well kgosi my

      raven my beautiful kudu-head let me hold you tight because

      you walk quietly like a staff flayed alone

      as I turn away: my complicity unbearable. stuck

      fast our present continues to die from our past

      11.

      fossilised tree trunk

      a small stone here on your desk in Canadian mica light

      a disk of fossilised trunk from a primeval obelisk you found

      as you took your leave of the farm, its soil folding back into night

      from glass-slimed clotting silt this stone gleam unwound

      a disk of fossilised trunk from a primeval obelisk you found

      silent seepings through sediment, steepings of milky groundwater

      from glass-slimed clotting silt this stone gleam unwound

      guilelessly palmed Palaeozoic charm from the Vredefort crater

      silent seepings through sediment, steepings of milky groundwater

      alliance of zinc and silicate: longing and light against magma’s gravity

      guilelessly palmed Palaeozoic charm from the Vredefort crater

      the earth is one and releases you from patrimony

      alliance of zinc and silicate: longing and light against magma’s gravity

      earthplated mantle and crust sang their gigabyte mantras so sweetly

      the earth is one and releases you from patrimony

      the earth belongs to no one and is molten eternity

      earthplated mantle and crust sang their gigabyte mantras so sweetly

      as you took your leave of the farm, its soil folding back into night

      the earth belongs to no one and is molten eternity

      a small stone here on your desk in Canadian mica light

      12.

      farm road bluegum and pine avenue

      gridgate flooded shut rusted storehouses

      wind pump collapsed stone walls

      deserted settlements in the distance dilapidated farm school

      broken border wires midday clouds building

      overgrown orchard mutilated apples

      burst dam khaki-weed cocklebur

      blackjack old mulberry tree plovers

      owl droppings under the slaughtering tree iron harrow in the cat-thorn

      pepper tree shade karee shadow

      quince avenue a wild rose hedge

      chicken coop poles gaping gate

      and the house someone is still living in the house in the morning walks

      out into the yard and raises her hands like gold pomegranates

      13.

      old yard

      wind that blows through bluegums in the yard rustles

      like no other wind in bluegums

      a wind becomes briny and disconsolate

      carving heart-high sounds of tatters and

      deathlight hardbaked exhausted

      dejected earth that staggers and fails

      to come to terms with the misery of

      devil’s thorns of wind-chafed trunk-scars

      of grief’s fibres and the tenacious stand of resistance

      a sheep bleats unpreserved

      a forehead-cleft of drought in my father

      after all the years we gurgle (the only outlasting ones)

      burdened with dying light and bloodsick with heritage

      : the new ones prepare to enter the yard

      Sunday lunch

      everyone’s home

      I cook the world as food

      is a humanised world

      to cook is an act of courtesy

      the kitchen steams in golden batter

      of laughter wine and spices

      the umbilical cord between us and the world

      is the casserole – Grandma Dot’s casserole

      in the oven – stuffed with rosemary

      and garlic ingots the joint sizzles

      every burning bush is a holy bush but

      he who presides over leg of lamb is a priest

      I boil rice as if I’m caring for little children

      with a grain of nutmeg I praise creation

      scrubbed carrots begin to glow from within

      in butter and ginger they find a true

      voice beans plunge into white pepper and fennel

      a salad spoon reveals a flash of currants softly

      clicking jewels of naked olive cherry tomato and

      almond the deepest precision of pumpkin arrives

      at the table the eaten-of-abundance-world

      is a beloved world a meal that overflows

      with warmheartedness’s blessed

      sounds yes, feeding people is a moral deed

      a resurrection. my exuberant family sits down to eat –

      suddenly brittle in their enoughness their un-

      scathed selves our all-still-togetherness. we praise

      easy generosity as the great sufficient Guarantee.

      The takers of the earth take hands.

      (after Martin Versfeld)

      loss

      I find myself

      for the sorest time

      in the crowd of burnt ones

      the unchronicled burnt-apart ones

      woundshot and heartshattered

      we walk stooped over

      our thirsting chests heavy with splintered downward-plunging sounds

      I bid him farewell

      this child of mine

      still calciumboned with so many flying dream-humming shadows

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