The Gift from the Sea

Johan van Rooyen

A crystoleum* for a spinsterish old man

Surely those chaps were
merely chaps?
— Lads ladding?
Careless, smart-assed,
just young? Bent on vacation tricks.

Three youths swim starkers
in an ebb-tide sea at sundown
in a carefree cove.

My sudden pang of gladness
gilds their gambol to a rite
and guarantees their nameless,
strange survival.

In the sepia seepage of memory
they bend, as glimpsed:
their buttocks pale and taut
— tight knots of force
that drive against the swell.

The sea quilts skyward
to a patched
and comfortless horizon.

They dive against the roar.
Their brazen backs delight
in sunset rays that ravish
acidly their brawny bulk.

So etched, they remain suspended.
They are burnished in recall.

Were I Paris, which grace
would I commend?
Lean limb? The sudden flash
— do I imagine it - of light
against a chest just barely turned?
The poise of loins, caught
in the act of leaping,
thrusting trustingly
the draining sea?

Alliterated they ring with magic
sound all echoes of my yearning.

They were, these bathers. Once.
I wasn’t gulled.

The mind’s daguerreotype decays
to morbid blur when buried
long from view.

The imprint foxes with complexity
and added overtones
in the airless, feverish
penumbra of the head.

A hopeful - exorcising? - visit
to this shore of yore
finds it predictably deserted.
The tracking waves lap high
upon the bank
in all-erasing self-defeat.

I take the eager waters in revenge,
but laugh, a little feebly,
as I’m tossed - and beached.

My poor attempt at pentimento
leaves me stranded
with my mental picture spoilt.

They were. I am!
Therefore they are, these lads:
Fantastic, ageless,
young as I, they are.

I comb them still
as jetsam from the tide
dictated by the twin moons
pendant to my belly.

As oysters tend to do
they wash up rarely pearled
— just barnacles
to random, floating thoughts.

Grit of the shingle of a fancied bay
they scour at the tissue
of all subsequent projections
and scarcely dared desire.

Each time recovered, each time
covered up by the shifty
sifting grains of truth
eddied to the shore,
they leave a vague, uneasy mark.

Now they are rocks, submerged,
which set my course.

From memory I paint them
against glass, against the light.
Pale colours suit their purpose
in this tracery.

I sketch the circumstance
of three young men.

In need of breath and daubs
to flesh them out once more,
I cast a new late sun
upon their phantom backs.

The cold sea shimmers
with a silvery thrill.
The footprints on that sandy beach
lead nowhere else, but here.

I pastel highlights shaded
to the tincture of a bright
and urgently awake libido.

It was all an impression?
Waste is at dusk as dust.

At last I write them
these three boys:

“On windless days a man carves
gently at a cloudy, weightless lump,
so bruised by storm
as not to show its substance.

“Awkwardly an orb will form,
with patience buffed to clarity:
not reproduced, but long preserved,
the globe relumes
FOUR creatures pent in amber.”

* Crystoleum refers to an “artistic” technique popular with ladies of leisure in the late 19th century whereby a preferably simple engraving is pasted onto a pane of glass. With the utmost patience the tissue of the paper is then scoured away, leaving only the tracery of the ink outlines of the design on the pane. A sort of paint-by-numbers job will then ensue, filling in “the colours” to the aesthetic fulfillment of devotees. Finally a self-defeating exercise: “If I show you my crystoleum, will you show me yours?” A wank.

“Gift from the sea” originally appeared in Standpunte 161, volume 35, number 5, October 1982. Johan van Rooyen has now revised it.

boontoe / to the top

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