Summer poems for the beloveds
1
husband
man with rampant tongue
hold me
and hear my heart howl with lust
flaying my skirt to the thigh
as I ride out on your voice
man
who holds me as if embracing womb
I am with young by you
my abdomen lows its fertility
in this festive midsummer light
our pelvic bones snap like horns
your buttocks knuckle white
you smear me out
man massive man
around whom I cave in
who groans for god and beast in my =0Bthroat
when I come to my senses
from your cheek I see
I bit blood
2
the earth is unfinished
and when the wind starts
the child stands in Kloof Street with his schoolbag
child of mine! I call to his back
there where my heart is tightest
as always
I am elsewhere
I think him into almonds
and arms full of pulled-up light
I trace his whispers in my matrix of blood
shyly the child shoots across the street
the wind takes his orthodontic drool
it’s me
your mother
but his eyes are on the brink of leaving me
the earth lies unfinished
the wind splinters from him the last that is child
and I tighten about him
past all guilt past all neglect
I love him
way
way beyond heart
3
the bay shines milk
sailboats sown like duwweltjies
behind waxpaper the mountain gnashes December blue
4
come day! come mountain
bloused in blue
come make me yours
gather me against yourself
lightsoft bundles
of bluebreast sky
fathoms and fathoms thereof
5
(christmas 1993)
after the rains
the veld gives herself like a slut to the green
of bare plains there is suddenly nothing of
everything sprees everything revels green
among thorn trees and braggart tassels
the karee heaves a vastrap in wild olive steams
and for christmas the katbos tiptoes small red berries
wait, oh wait
every afternoon the gingergreen kuil is filled out
by a boon of clouds in — is it hailwhite?
the excess of the veld so unimpaired
so sudden
so drenched with cicada sound
so lavishly festive
and fraught with green
it attests to a gross insensitivity about us
us to whom the veld belongs
belied and belittled we feel
we to whom the veld belongs
eroded bewildered assaulted we feel
we to whom the veld belongs
this perhaps our last together
like this
Translated from the Afrikaans by the poet