Uffe

Rustum Kozain

(For J., S., P.)

Your father has hands big
as loaves of bread. And scared
of nothing. Not a flower arrangement;
not brick nor mortar. Nothing.

Nothing is impossible given time,
some thought and labour. He can make
something out of anything: a small coal stove
and a warm room from some second-hand rust;

and a car for his daughters
from four wheels and a shell.
But when he eats he makes nothing
of everything: a pot of soup, all the bread

and half the cow disappear in one gulp
and a loud guffaw, eyes narrow
in pleasure under the fat cicadas
we all mistake for his eyebrows.

Rest sometimes, rest from a field
of landmines he works to clear
around god-forsaken Tete, rest
he fashions from whisky

in a glass big enough for his hands,
Keith Jarrett on the stereo
and him in his favourite chair.

                 *

Then he disappears. Somewhere.
Hitchhiking north into Zimbabwe
to fetch a stranded car,
his wife your mother waiting in Jo’burg

with a mountain of their life together
gathered as they reach retirement.
Him gone for days, you join your mother.
Then you call.

And your cry of grief
the heart's wail as it tightens
but finds only a hole
and he is suddenly gone

a father a husband a pair of hands
big as loaves and scared of nothing
rough as brick gentle as flower
suddenly still, lying still beside him

in a small-town morgue
his hands lie still beside him.

                 *

S– , sometimes your voice still comes
to me in its inconsolable, piercing grief.
And when it comes, sometimes still, as then,
I wish I could freeze time, turn it back

as if by words alone like a crazed god
or poet I could order the universe,
reorder it so that your voice
may be unacquainted with grief.

And that Uffe your father somewhere
still wrestles with a sod or stone,
slaps a spade into wet earth
at lunch swallows a bellyful in one go

then in the evening pours a whisky
and sinks back
as the Köln concert washes over him
and from the kitchen the smell of peanuts roasting

LitNet: 04 May 2006

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