Rondebosch Common

Kelwyn Sole

There are no lovers here. Just three goslings, stung to death, and a dirty
Black South-Easter blown up out of nowhere

but if you come in, among white lilies and small, grudging orchids that
open their mouths in shock at spring, and step carefully to listen, through
the cloying din close on every side you may detect, if you’re lucky, the
mewling cat-call of a Longclaw.

Where you step provokes flickers of doubt at the extremity of your
vision: coalescing into Cabbage Whites or Autumn Widows, depending
on the season. Your dog selects the best spot to invest the yellow money
of its urine. Ticks which cannot believe their luck begin choosing
between the two of you as a means of transport.

And so not lifeless. All around, a dirge of traffic eddies between the
enclosing, scrummed-down houses of the bourgeois; those who keep
their gardens to themselves. A hospital. A school.

Call this unhabitual scruffiness, if you want. Or a simulacrum of the
natural. Whatever the case, there’s a possibility to squinny across open
space to where the mountain looms. For all our sakes, this area stays a
cipher, clothed sometimes in fire, sometimes in rain, but always with its
lustreless grass kneeling for mercy against the wind, the wind.

So what a terrible lunchtime it must have been, that pre-school fête, as
one crippled and clumsy child no one liked strayed too far, then tried to
scale a pine to show he could … only to come a cropper with flailing
limbs, knocking against a bees’ nest on the way down.

Imagine: squeals of children; panicked mothers rear-ending prams into
each other in something that resembles road rage, swatting; and teachers
who bellow orders no one cares to listen to. And everyone with arms
upraised warding off sudden panic

as unbidden for once

the lives of beasts irrupt into their focus.

From Land dreaming: prose poems
(University of KwaZulu-Natal Press, 2006 forthcoming)

LitNet: 31 January 2006

Did you enjoy this poem? Have your say! Send your comments to webvoet@litnet.co.za, and become a part of our interactive opinion page.

Click here to receive our newsletter - your weekly cultural fix! Check out what's sizzling on our newsletter this week

back    /     to the top

© Kopiereg in die ontwerp en inhoud van hierdie webruimte behoort aan LitNet, uitgesluit die kopiereg in bydraes wat berus by die outeurs wat sodanige bydraes verskaf. LitNet streef na die plasing van oorspronklike materiaal en na die oop en onbeperkte uitruil van idees en menings. Die menings van bydraers tot hierdie werftuiste is dus hul eie en weerspieël nie noodwendig die mening van die redaksie en bestuur van LitNet nie. LitNet kan ongelukkig ook nie waarborg dat hierdie diens ononderbroke of foutloos sal wees nie en gebruikers wat steun op inligting wat hier verskaf word, doen dit op hul eie risiko. Media24, M-Web, Ligitprops 3042 BK en die bestuur en redaksie van LitNet aanvaar derhalwe geen aanspreeklikheid vir enige regstreekse of onregstreekse verlies of skade wat uit sodanige bydraes of die verskaffing van hierdie diens spruit nie. LitNet is ’n onafhanklike joernaal op die Internet, en word as gesamentlike onderneming deur Ligitprops 3042 BK en Media24 bedryf.