Spa

The dark settling with the dust
under the bluegums -
in the sky, a sharp cusp of yellow
holds the heavy round of moon in place.

She finds
Aliwal North spa
hidden in suburbia,
an anomaly.

neglected –
the plush lawns of the eighties,
replaced
by sand,
watchful Africans,
instead of well-off Afrikaners,
the guests.

She leaves the shelter of the big car
she has driven all day,
next to the shed,
and holding her boy’s hand,
follows the security guard
into its shadows.

A few pale discs of neon
flicker overhead,
illuminating a rectangle of
blue bubbling water
– bloodwarm.

Glossy tropical plants fringe the pool,
but pigeon-feathers
fleck its troubled surface.
A jagged rent
in the ceiling reveals tacit stars,
receding.

The lopsided Spur poster on the stairwell
in the corner
speaks of better days.
She remembers
tawny children,
her own lithe sixteen year-old body
trawling the waters.

Now, a mother,
heavier,
she wades,
carries her laughing boy
across the ferment,
emerging
from the earth’s womb.

Together,
they hold their breaths,
drop under,
into the heat of the heartbeat,
that pulses through
dirty white wooden floorboards.

The glass of the French doors
permits a night-time view onto thatched umbrellas, secretive palms –
as impressions of plants and moving water
reverberate against
its stillness.

Rafters angle
high above her,
rational, elusive.

She lets
the silver handrail
slip from her hands

the water
caresses the back of her head,

tender as a lover.


4.9.08

Reading Plath

Outside in the forest –
the night crickets of South Africa chime precisely,
like small xylophones,
into the luxurious night –
while fluting tree-frogs
colour the air deep black, and
night pools richly around the house.

Indoors, reclining,
but not at ease
she stills her mind –
its jarring images competing
like mismatched jigsaw puzzle pieces
clamouring to be made part of a whole –
feel the Faber & Faber book,
anchor-steady in her hand.

Bravely, the light from the bedside lamp
reaches between the stiff formality of green silk curtains –
grasps darkness,
making of it,
something new.

A poem, from far away,
written in England, in another century,
flares and
ricochets across the rough page into consciousness,
like a bullet, finding its mark.
1956. ‘Firesong.’
‘brave love, dream
not of staunching such strict flame, but come,
lean to my wound; burn on, burn on’.

Plath’s rooks caw –
unappeased,
as she rages at the ragged American ocean
her grandmother left behind,
‘what is it
survives, grieves
so, over this battered, obstinate spit
of gravel? The waves’
spewed relics clicker masses in the wind,
grey waves the stub-necked eiders ride.
a labour of love, and that labour lost.
steadily the sea
eats at Point Shirley’.

The words are powerful
enough
to reach beyond death.

No ‘blank untenanted air’
here,
from the mute November Graveyard
where Plath lies buried.

Rather – the air
she bequeathed
is as fecund as that of the night-time jungle in Africa –
sixty years on –
pulsing beyond the patient window.

Peopled with a wealth of words,
Coming, going,
Like spirits,
Like angels.

Like dreams
that elude
the woman who read Plath
lying there wide-eyed in the dark

with a mind
on fire.

21.8


References

‘Firesong’, ‘Point Shirley’, ‘November Graveyard’ are all from Sylvia Plath’s Collected Poems (Faber & Faber, London, 1990)

Cripple

Everything in his life
hinges now
on that minute, over so
quickly,
the gust took him,
blew him across the air, and
dumped him on the ground
– crumpled beneath his ‘chute
like a fistful of newspaper.

After they disentangled him,
after the hospital, the doctors,
the morphine, the pain –
the nightmares came,
waking him in the dark
gasping –
turned back on himself
like a embryo,
but one unable to grow
a new spine.

For her –
loving him is harder
than loving herself.

His wheelchair
comes between them.
Iron-wheeled, squat –
implacable as a gaoler,
while his jealousy fastens
limpet-like
on the backs of the men
who drift around her,
drones, waiting for their queen to
choose.

She wonders:
if he could take her properly
– show her who’s boss
– would it make him softer,
slower to impugn
her desire?

Yet – as she dances alone
at the jazz concert –
she keeps him in the
corner of her eye.
Seated, nursing a Savannah plugged with lemon.

Watches him
like sailors, finding their way at night,
might look up
as the stars above them
wheel and turn
– gleaming, celestial,
purer than the water that reflects them −

form a compass
to map
a way
home.

160808

Alone

I lie on my bed
And try to remember pleasure
Given by another
The feeling of being wanted
Slips like a fish
Into a dark crevice.

22.7

Going to the shops

Saturday morning at the shops, and all the others
help her get over herself.
She sees a girl with tapered legs and crutches
who smiles to her friend keeping pace with her
in the wheelchair
Their reflections in the Milady’s window
Do not disturb them.
Not even a black and white polka-dotted shirt
That hangs suspended in the air
From a faceless mannequin.

The air in the butchers is cool.
As she places her slabs of meat
On the counter
She hears the middle-aged man
Next to her speak to a mate
About ‘breakfasting at Musgrave,
doing a shop here, and stopping off at Woolworths
on our way home,’
his desperation to be part of a norm
as well-ironed
as his neat blue shorts.

The drab cashier
is training her daughter
with the high cheekbones
and small shy eyes
to use the debit card machine.
Her gold rings glitter
As she hands over the till slip
As delicately as a deer stepping into a trap.

Checkers heaves like a turbulent sea -
as chaotic as the inside
Of her own head.
The order here
Is random,
And terrifying.

There is so much need.

Can it placate
The loneliness
That burns in her
Like a mad man’s eyes?

A fat woman in a pink and green gingham tent
From which her arms emerge
Like pale pork sausages
Remembers something at the door
Dispatches a girl
to the toiletries shelf
To fetch Flex shampoo
For oily hair.

Two young men
Bare-footed
Even in winter,
Stroke their goatees
As they confer near the Chips shelf.

An elderly couple
Talk to each other
In a language she does not know.
Its harshness
Explains the wrinkles
In the old woman’s face.
Her shoulders under her pink cardigan
Hunched,
Her tired sore body sloping
Towards the floor.
She cannot see the man’s expression,
He is turned away.

‘Masturbation is not a sin’
announces a yellow T-shirt
wrapped around the burly
chest of a vacant-eyed man.

A small black baby is tied
To her mother’s back
With a soft blue blanket.

She remembers being
A child
At OK bazaars,
In Grahamstown, long ago.

The fluorescent lights,
And the Cheezers you bit a tiny hole into
So that you could squirt processed cheese
Into your mouth.

19.7

Passing through

His eyes are holograms
his body
is barely there
in the darkness
beneath the lintel

passing through,
into the courtyard
where children play
there are
trees fringeing
the lattice work
a pale blue summer sky yearns

the lemon juice
is bitter
before he adds sugared water
it cools her mouth
like a breath
close to the nape.

feelings swim up in her
like silvery fish.

she speaks the word
- desire

he hands her a key.

11.7

Chaise longue - a vignette

she reclines,
sips lap sang souchong
from a cracked Delft mug
– brown, like river water
it tastes of smoke

The window behind her empties
Into a riot of roses.
Peonies spill onto soft grass.
The summer is insistent
Only the thin pane of glass keeps it at bay

She half-wishes there were curtains to draw
Against the white light that striates her papery-thin skin

The quiet of the house
Descends like a Cy Twombly wave
Thick, green and languid.

A crumpled lily leans from its vase,
submitting to its reflection
on the polished mahogany table.

Fragrant,
It dusts her hand golden with pollen
As she plucks off,
A drooping leaf.

09.07.08