The racial nuances deftly sprinkled as an unobtrusive backdrop to J.M. Coetzee's BOYHOOD, reminded me of a poem I'd not read in years, and had to trawl through my shelves to find; italicized words have explanatory notes at the end provided by the editors of the volume I took this from; do ask in the comments if there's anything still not clear though:

KHOIKHOI-Son-of-Man by Modikwe Dikobe, South Africa, born 1913

I thought I was soul and skin
Pedigree muntu
Until yesterday I heard the truth
Grandfather was a Khoisan.

A slave of a trekboer
Fleeing from the Cape laws
Freeing slaves.

At night
He was tied to an oxwagon wheel
Groaning
Day by day leading sixteen span
Fleeing from the Cape.

Night by night
Somewhere there was a cock-crow
A barking dog
A smell of damp fuel
Then he realized that beyond that ridge
Could be a village
Of people like him.

He unfastened himself,
Trotted out of the camp,
Vanished into the night.

At dawn he was at a village
Begging to be taken into the tribe
'A tribesman, hunter, chief's servant and messenger.'

Swift as an antelope was he
Outstripping runners
Chased by dogs.
'Ka modimo', they swore.
'He is a man of the cloud.
'Ompone ke tswa kae?'
A legendary tale: where have you seen me?
'I have seen you from the cloud.'
Khoikhoi-Son-of-Man.

I knew since yesterday
that he was my grandfather
Khoikhoi-Son-of-Man.

Notes:
muntu Slang term for a black African; now considered degrading.

Khoisan Hunter-gatherer tribe (initially called Bushmen) indigenous to the Cape; now largely exterminated.

trekboer The 'trekboers' were farmers of Dutch descent who left the Cape and travelled ('trekked') with wagons drawn by oxen into the interior of the country. One of the reasons they left was to escape new laws that made slavery illegal, and that would have freed their slaves.

'Ka modimo' 'By God' or 'I swear on oath' (Tswana).

'Ompone ke tswa kae?' These words are translated in the next line [of the poem].

"Dikobe was born in the Transvaal and raised in Sophiatown, a black township that was known for its cultural diversity and liveliness before it was rezoned as a 'white' residential area, and demolished by the apartheid government. He had limited access to schooling, and gained much of his education through correspondence. He held a variety of humble jobs, including selling newspapers. His first novel (The Marabi Dance), together with his poetry, identified him as a writer passionately concerned with black oppression under apartheid." (p. 138)

from SEASONS COME TO PASS: a poetry anthology for southern African students, 2nd edition, edited by Helen Moffett and Es'kia Mphahlele.

RECOLLECTION - by Shimmer Chinodya, Zimbabwe, born 1957. Winner of the Noma Award 2007.

I remember this wood only too well.
I remember these crouching thorn trees (- it seems
they've hardly grown ever since I last saw them -)
And these criss-crossing bush paths
Bordering a coarse crop of grass yellowed
With the dust stirred up
By swishing feet of children, and
The wind of course.
I remember too, the chirping of the timid little birds.

I remember how we used to run barefoot
Under these thorn trees.
Three brothers with feet full of thorns -
Bird-shooting we were, with rough made little catapults
That exploded into our own faces.
And pockets full of jingling stones picked up somewhere.
Between us we shot down one bird in a year.

I remember the big sign that said
Something about people not being allowed in -
And we, heedless, half ignorant prowlers
Made the wood our hunting-ground
And birds and bitter little berries our prey.

I remember it only too well...
I remember even more now, how young we were then
And how this scrub bush
Growing patched and ungreen - a short walk
From the township's street of grim houses
Satisfied our boyish dreams.

from EXPLORINGS: a collection of poems for the young people of southern Africa compiled by Robin Malan.

No access to internet this week (more on that later) - back blogging on the 4th.

I am rushing off to London for my terrifying Tamil class. All the other beginners dropped out, so I've been incorporated into an advanced class that swooshes merrily over my head. As a result, I can't think clearly about anything much on Wednesdays - so have a poem from one of my favourite South African poets:

Overseas Visitor - Chris Zithulele Mann, South Africa, born 1948

It happened in my sister's backyard in Johannesburg.
I'd packed my bag, was late for the plane back home
and rushing to say goodbye to her husband and young.

Their guest, gentle, humorous, urbane of speech,
the poet and novelist from Delhi, Vikram Seth,
was jetting round the linguisphere of Planet Earth

to plug into its scattered English-speaking nodes
his latest chip, a macro-byte of India's dharma.
With hands on hips, stretching a troublesome back,

he stood beside the tumble-drier, holding a shirt,
drifting, as often that week, back into a privacy
I thought I recognized, where shades emerge and fade,

where present hopes and old regrets, fresh hurts
and solitude are reconciled and generate new dreams.
Mandela being out of prison, the first elections

still a mirage on a wavering, smoke-smudged horizon,
history was breaking out, around and within us.
Standing in the doorway, I started to say goodbye,

remembering a novel set in the raj, rough terrain,
an Indian and colonist on horses, near friendship,
the author, the era stating No, not yet, not there.

A lifting of eyelids. A smile. And then, suddenly,
the dharma, around and within, was urging Here, Now.
I dropped my suitcase on the threshold and embraced.

from THE NEW CENTURY OF SOUTH AFRICAN POETRY edited by Michael Chapman.

Last year we planted espallier cherry and apricot trees, the idea being that eventually they will screen the "working" vegetable and herb patches from the rest of the garden. Amazingly, we've had fruit! The hazard of cherry growing is knowing when to pick - leave them until they're fully ripe and you run the risk of little critters getting there first. Last year a squirrel sat quietly and munched the whole lot, leaving the stones in a neat little pile. This year we had masses of cherries, but a blackbird snuck up while I wasn't looking, and we only ate a quarter of the crop. Next year I'm buying some sort of fleece to keep them all off!

We've just eaten the apricots - delicious, beautifully coloured and with that tanginess that takes me right back to my childhood and sitting up in the apricot tree, eating straight from the branch, ducking wasps.

THIS IS JUST TO SAY by William Carlos Williams, 1883-1963

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

The Second Coming - William Butler Yeats

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

I still have the poetry textbook from which I learned this poem, the margins crammed with scribbled pencil notes. I was sixteen and read it alongside THINGS FALL APART by Chinua Achebe. The first eight lines of poetry seemed so apt in the midst of Apartheid South Africa, and Achebe's book was a revelation.

Decades later, and this week Chinua Achebe was announced winner of the Man Booker International 2007 - a well-deserved honour for a writer who changed the face of African fiction in the twentieth century, and greatly influenced global literature at the time of his earlier works.

The Guardian (see full article here) notes that Nadine Gordimer, on the judging panel, says of Achebe:

"...he has achieved "what one of his characters brilliantly defines as the writer's purpose: 'a new-found utterance' for the capture of life's complexity. This fiction is an original synthesis of the psychological novel, the Joycean stream of consciousness, the post-modern breaking of sequence. He is a joy and an illumination to read."

And the BBC also reports.

I am delighted at the news.

I'm off to London today - a party celebrating the UK launch of Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka's new memoir, YOU MUST SET FORTH A DAWN. I've never met him, so this is very exciting!

Soyinka is arguably Nigeria's greatest playwright, but he has also written literary criticism, fiction, plenty of poetry and several autobiographical volumes. He is the first African to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature (in 1986).

Civilian and Soldier - Wole Soyinka, Nigeria

My apparition rose from the fall of lead,
Declared, 'I'm a civilian.' It only served
To aggravate your fright. For how could I
Have risen, a being of this world, in that hour
Of impartial death! And I thought also: nor is
Your quarrel of this world.

You stood still
For both eternities, and oh I heard the lesson
Of your training sessions, cautioning -
Scorch earth behind you, do not leave
A dubious neutral to the rear. Reiteration
Of my civilian quandary, burrowing earth
From the lead festival of your more eager friends
Worked the worse on your confusion, and when
You brought the gun to bear on me, and death
Twitched me gently in the eye, your plight
And all of you came clear to me.

I hope some day
Intent upon my trade of living, to be checked
In stride by your apparition in a trench,
Signalling, I am a soldier. No hesitation then
But I shall shoot you clean and fair
With meat and bread, a gourd of wine
A bunch of breasts from either arm, and that
Lone question - do you friend, even now, know
What it is all about?

from THE PENGUIN BOOK OF MODERN AFRICAN POETRY edited by Gerald Moore and Ulli Beier

Oh woe is me! My head really hurts...I am making friends with my hot water bottle and the echinacea. So, another poem for sustenance:

LIFE'S GIFTS - Olive Schreiner, 1855-1920, South Africa

I saw a woman sleeping. In her sleep she dreamt Life stood before her, and held in each hand a gift - in the one Love, in the other Freedom. And she said to the woman, 'Choose!'

And the woman waited long: and she said 'Freedom!'

And Life said, 'Thou hast well chosen. If thou hadst said, "Love," I would have given thee that thou didst ask for; and I would have gone from thee, and returned to thee no more. Now, the day will come when I shall return. In that day I shall bear both gifts in one hand.'

I heard the woman laugh in her sleep.

(Published posthumously, 1923)
from THE NEW CENTURY OF SOUTH AFRICAN POETRY edited by Michael Chapman.

I have retreated to bed with a box of tissues, Vicks Vaporub and ginger tea. Have a poem today:

AN AFRICAN ELEGY - Ben Okri, Nigeria

We are the miracles that God made
To taste the bitter fruit of Time.
We are precious.
And one day our suffering
Will turn into the wonders of the earth.

There are things that burn me now
Which turn golden when I am happy.
Do you see the mystery of our pain?
That we bear poverty
And are able to sing and dream sweet things.

And that we never curse the air when it is warm
Or the fruit when it tastes so good
Or the lights that bounce gently on the waters?
We bless things even in our pain.
We bless them in silence.

That is why our music is so sweet.
It makes the air remember.
There are secret miracles at work
That only time will bring forth.
I too have heard the dead singing.

And they tell me that
This life is good
They tell me to live it gently
With fire, and always with hope.
There is wonder here.

And there is surprise
In everything the unseen moves.
The ocean is full of songs.
The sky is not an enemy.
Destiny is our friend.

from THE PENGUIN BOOK OF MODERN AFRICAN POETRY edited by Gerald Moore and Ulli Beier

Xiaolu Guo's protagonist "Z" about whom I blogged yesterday, reminded me of a poem I grew up on, expressing the pain and frustration of having one's name and identity evaporated, really because others cannot take the trouble to see the real person. I tracked it down, and here it is.

First, a translation issue 'Wat is daai, se nou weer?' means "What is that, say it again." More importantly, the poem must be seen in the context of Apartheid-era bureacracy and society. All black people working in cities were required to apply for a pass in order to work or pass through an area other than where they were born, without which they would be arrested. This was a vile system - in other words just to get from place to place within your own country you had to have documentation. Because white officials were uninterested in black names and language, (and also as a way to deliberately make people feel oppressed) almost all black people in South Africa eventually acquired a "school name," in other words a name easy for white people to pronounce. One of the fabulous things about the new South Africa, is seeing this practice gradually falling away, with full names used, and all languages represented on official documentation, but it will take time. While it seems a small thing, it is yet another way to enforce rule over others when you take their name and personhood away. I don't think this is a great poem, but it is a great expression of pain and confusion and in the end perhaps that is what makes a good poem...

MY NAME - Magoleng wa Selepe, South Africa

Nomgqibelo Ncamisile Mnqhibisa

Look what they have done to my name...
the wonderful name of my great-great-grandmothers
Nomgqibelo Ncamisile Mnqhibisa

The burly bureaucrat was surprised.
What he heard was music to his ears
'Wat is daai, se nou weer?'
'I am from Chief Daluxolo Velayigodle of emaMpodweni
And my name is Nomgqibelo Ncamisile Mnqhibisa.'

Messia, help me!
My name is so simple
and yet so meaningful,
but to this man it is trash...

He gives me a name
Convenient enough to answer his whim:
I end up being
Maria...
I...
Nomgqibelo Ncamisile Mnqhibisa.

from EXPLORINGS: a collection of poems for the young people of Southern Africa compiled by Robin Malan

By way of preparation, should you attempt to say this out loud yourself: "q" is a hard, echoing click a bit like a cork popping - place the main part of your tongue on the middle of the roof of your mouth towards the back and click; "c" is a soft sound - place the tip of your tongue against your top front teeth and click; "x" is a click through the side of the mouth between the teeth (as when using the universal sound encouraging a horse to "gee up"). Go on, try - you know you want to!

One of the things I've hugely enjoyed about leaving the great daily commute up to London and working from home, is a growing sense of community. My typical day begins rising with the (enthusiastically loud) birds in the line of trees just over our back hedge, and once the giri has left for work I knuckle down to a few hours work. On a good day I will have accomplished oodles by lunch, on a bad day I will have stared blankly at the screen or found that the ironing pile, the dishes, or scrubbing out the bathtub are ever so much more interesting. By the afternoon I'm getting cabin fever and will walk into town (a 20 minute brisk stroll), and now that the weather's fine it is still light when I get back so the garden magnetically attracts, pulling me in with the joys of weeding (actually, I hate weeding but find it strangely therapeutic). Then it is about time to start cooking dinner, or re-heating the leftovers.

What has changed drastically is my lifestyle. Where once I was on the train by 7am and returning at 9 or 9:30pm, I rarely rush anywhere now. It wasn't until I stopped insane commuting that I realized just how tired and stressed I was, and (unless needs must) I will never opt for a commute again. Almost all our shopping was supermarket-based surrounded by hordes of other people rushing to accomplish the same mission (get in and out as quickly as possible). I'm not knocking it, just explaining how it was. I still pop into the supermarket, as there are some things I can't get anywhere else, but I'm much more focussed on small, local businesses these days. The charming result of this, is a genuine engagement with community which I'd not even particularly noticed was missing.

Yesterday, for example, chatting to a distinguished looking gentleman I've known about town for the past ten months or so, I discovered he had offered the first university-level African and Caribbean literature course in the UK back in the 1950s! How amazing! We mentally raced through our bookshelves and will be trading bits and bobs shortly. I love that at the local farmers' market which runs six days a week, the baker, the cheese stall holder, and the veg stall staff all know us (not well, of course, but enough that it is a beginning); the Bangladeshi grocer gives us freebies of chillies and ginger (he's the only place in town to get paneer, bitter gourd, tiny baby brinjals and curry leaves for Indian cooking); the Kenyan Indian newsagent family are charming (we've progressed to me being chided if I don't look like I've just come from the gym when I pop by for my paper); then there are the staff at the wholefood store, the librarians (of course - I practically live there) and the retired clergy...

Small town life - it exists despite itself, but you have to know where to look, and you have to have time. I have to thank the giri for that: giving me time while he slogs away for the both of us.

THE WORD (from LABORATORIES OF THE SPIRIT) by R.S. Thomas (1913-2000)

A pen appeared, and the god said:
'Write what it is to be
man.' And my hand hovered
long over the bare page.

until there, like footprints
of the lost traveller, letters
took shape on the page's
blankness, and I spelled out

the word 'lonely'. And my hand moved
to erase it; but the voices
of all those waiting at life's
window cried out loud: 'It is true.'

A very blessed Christmas to you all and, whether you celebrate the religious aspect of this part of the year or not, I hope that the year ahead will be a joy filled and peaceful one for everyone.

The incumbent Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, is also a poet, and in keeping with the season, I offer you this poem of his:

ADVENT CALENDAR

He will come like last leaf's fall.
One night when the November wind
has flayed the trees to bone, and earth
wakes choking on the mould,
the soft shroud's folding.

He will come like frost.
One morning when the shrinking earth
opens on mist, to find itself
arrested in the net
of alien, sword-set beauty.

He will come like dark.
One evening when the bursting red
December sun draws up the sheet
and penny-masks its eye to yield
the star-snowed fields of sky.

He will come, will come,
will come like crying in the night,
like blood, like breaking,
as the earth writhes to toss him free.
He will come like child.

From LIGHT UNLOCKED: Christmas Card Poems edited by Kevin Crossley-Holland and Lawrence Sail.

Back on the 27th.

Originating over at Cam's Commentary, a poetry meme is currently doing the rounds, and while I won't do the whole thing, something happened yesterday to inspire me. It was a wretched, wailing storm of a day (wind howling like a freight train and lashing rain); I was absolutely drenched by the time I'd walked into town and after drying off (mostly) over coffee, I decided to sit out the worst by dashing from secondhand bookshop to secondhand bookshop, exploring.

Because it is off the main high street I tend to ignore the charming Chaucer Bookshop. Should you pay the city a visit, I recommend a detour here if you are a booklover, or collecter of engravings. You can lose yourself for hours - it is cosy and well-stocked with a really interesting collection (which has the added benefit of being largely well organized). I suspect that with the demise of The Albion, The Chaucer Bookshop will become my favourite haunt. It is not cheap as it is not a charity shop (which all the other secondhand shops in town are), but most of the stock is antiquarian or good, clean secondhand copies at roughly half the market price. You will find excellent gifts here, and books to own and cherish.

By chance, I spotted a book now out of print but still widely available on abebooks and amazon, THE PENGUIN BOOK OF IRISH VERSE edited by Brendan Kennelly. I snaffled it up, as it happens to contain my favourite poem.

Context, of course, is everything. I was raised in an activist household during the apartheid era. This was a poem we were taught when I was young by my wonderful parents for whom the cost of standing up to be counted as people opposed to apartheid, was considerable at the time. This poem spoke to them, and it spoke to me, and it may yet speak to you if you are working towards a world you imagine as better, but not yet achieved.

Several significant events in my life surround the poem. It was read at my baptism. I of course don't remember the occasion as I was a baby, but it has special significance as a result. My father read it as a farewell to a parish that had treated his vision for a new South Africa with some incomprehension. The high school I attended, while academically excellent, was a grim place for a teenager who felt (and was treated) as an outsider. We were asked to select for class a poem with special meaning to us and explain why. Aged 17, I recited this poem as my chosen selection:

THE FOOL - Patrick Pearse, 1879-1916

Since the wise men have not spoken, I speak that am only a fool;
A fool that hath loved his folly,
Yea, more than the wise men their books or their counting houses, or their quiet homes,
Or their fame in men's mouths;
A fool that in all his days hath done never a prudent thing,
Never hath counted the cost, nor recked if another reaped
The fruit of his mighty sowing, content to scatter the seed;
A fool that is unrepentant, and that soon at the end of all
Shall laugh in his lonely heart as the ripe ears fall to the reaping-hooks
And the poor are filled that were empty,
Tho' he go hungry.

I have squandered the splendid years that the Lord God gave to my youth
In attempting impossible things, deeming them alone worth the toil.
Was it folly or grace? Not men shall judge me, but God.

I have squandered the splendid years:
Lord, if I had the years I would squander them over again,
Aye, fling them from me!
For this I have heard in my heart, that a man shall scatter, not hoard, Shall do the deed of today, nor take thought of tomorrow's teen,
Shall not bargain or huxter with God; or was it a jest of Christ's
And is this my sin before men, to have taken Him at His word?

The lawyers have sat in council, the men with the keen, long faces,
And said, 'This man is a fool,' and others have said, 'He blasphemeth';
And the wise have pitied the fool that hath striven to give a life
In the world of time and space among the bulks of actual things,
To a dream that was dreamed in the heart, and that only the heart could hold.

O wise men, riddle me this: what if the dream come true?
What if the dream come true? and if millions unborn shall dwell
In the house that I shaped in my heart, the noble house of my thought?
Lord, I have staked my soul, I have staked the lives of my kin
On the truth of Thy dreadful word. Do not remember my failures,
But remember this my faith.

And so I speak.
Yea, ere my hot youth pass, I speak to my people and say:
Ye shall be foolish as I; ye shall scatter, not save;
Ye shall venture your all, lest ye lose what is more than all;
Ye shall call for a miracle, taking Christ at His word.
And for this I will answer, O people, answer here and hereafter,
O people that I have loved shall we not answer together?

Patrick Pearse was executed, Easter of 1916, following the Irish uprising.

P.W. Botha, the former South African president, died on Tuesday night. M&G news reports here and here.

This may make me sound like an awful person, but all I thought when I heard the news was "thank God," with a smile of relief. Nothing good came from that man. He subjected millions of South Africans to lives of abject poverty and misery. I suspect we will never be able to count the true cost of the damage caused by his time in office. Just as I do not mourn the passing of numerous other dictators and autocrats around the world, so I do not mourn him. And yes, it is very, very personal. He had a deliberate, precise, direct impact on my family, with terrible results.

Sometimes things sneak up on you unawares. One minute everything is fine and you are going about your daily life, the next everything has changed, becoming a place you have no concept of. Botha had that effect on me. This poem from a book I am currently reading struck me as perfectly accurate at capturing this feeling of a sea change; you are quietly going about your own business, and the world around you changes violently beyond all recognition:

THE DOORBELL - Adrian Mitchell

I was in bed, the silvery light of dawn
blessing our quiet suburban street,
when the window darkened,
and the doorbell rang.

Pushed my face deep in the pillow,
but the doorbell kept ringing
and there was another sound,
like the crying of a siren,
so I slopped downstairs
unbolted, unlocked, unchained
and opened the front door.

There, on the doorstep, stood the War.
It filled my front garden,
filled the entire street
and blotted out the sky.
It was human and monstrous,
shapeless, enormous,
with torn and poisoned skin which bled
streams of yellow, red and black.

The War had many millions of heads
both dead and half-alive,
some moaning, some screaming,
some whispering,
in every language known on earth,
goodbye, my love.

The War had many millions of eyes
and all wept tears of molten steel.
Then the War spoke to me
in a voice of bombs and gunfire:
I am your War.
Can I come in?

from LEBANON, LEBANON edited by Anna Wilson.

In 1999 I spent a summer working as a resident advisor for the summer school of my alma mater in Boston. A young South African (aged about 16 at the time) was sent to me so that I, as resident South African, could check on her progress and how she was settling in to a strange environment. I asked her how things were going. "Fine," she responded, "but people keep asking me about apartheid and I don't know what to say because I never studied history."

I don't think I've ever recovered from the shock. It must be how people who survived the Second World War feel when faced by young people today. The difference in meaning and understanding in the words "Lest We Forget" to respective generations.

Don't get me wrong. On the one hand I am thrilled that in such a short space of time society can begin to feel "ordinary". On the other hand, it is vital to remember how close we are to darker and more difficult times. Petrona has some interesting reflections on the British suffragette movement, which has similarly close associations of times changing for women in Britain. It is not so very long ago.

In my last post I mentioned banned persons. One of the most difficult challenges for those banned and under house arrest was the ruling that one could not attend social gatherings, a gathering defined as "more than one other person." The following poem captures the futility, stupidity and loneliness of Apartheid law. I should add that this kind of experience was widespread. For purposes of clarity, a "koppie" is a small hill; the "Special Branch" were Apartheid-era secret police.

THE WEDDING - Hugh Lewin, South Africa, born 1939

Solly Nathee
stood alone
on the koppie overlooking his home.

Solly Nathee
alone on the koppie
stood watching his home
where his daughter was getting married.

The guests
at the home below
were feasting the bride and the groom.

Near Solly Nathee
on the koppie
sat the Special Branch
watching
to see that Solly Nathee
banned from social gatherings
behaved himself
at his daughter's wedding.

The guests
at the home below
feasted the bride and groom
then walked
one by one
up the koppie
to shake the hand of Solly Nathee.

Solly Nathee
at his daughter's wedding
stood on the koppie overlooking his home
alone.

from EXPLORINGS: a collection of poems for the young people of Southern Africa compiled by Robin Malan.

I found an interesting article on Frank Kermode and the study of literature. The closing paragraph reads:

"I don't at all think that the time we spent on Theory was wasted. One of the great benefits of seriously reading English is you're forced to read a lot of other things. You may not have a deep acquaintance with Hegel but you need to know something about Hegel. Or Hobbes, or Aristotle, or Roland Barthes. We're all smatterers in a way, I suppose. But a certain amount of civilisation depends on intelligent smattering."

Excellent! So, no more guilt about having my nose in a book all the time - I am clearly an archetypal smatterer!

And now for some world affairs; yesterday Ashraf Ghani, former Finance Minister, was nominated by the government of Afghanistan for the position of Secretary General of the United Nations. Anyone interested in knowing more about him or seeing the line-up of candidates should take a look at www.unsg.org

Are you interested in knowing what the pope actually said last week? Click here for the text of his address.

And now for some silliness:

THE THINKER - Anthony Delius, South Africa, born 1916

Round and round our lavatory
walks a depressed cricket
like a lonely manager
of a cement factory,

the huge cistern and bowl
and mysterious pipes above him,
and he worries, ticking with calculation,
troubled about production
and reproduction.

Every now and then, at unpredictable intervals,
comes darkness,
and seven-league boots, and enormous draperies
drop down from heaven,
and afterwards
a great roaring, an apocalypse of waters.

And the serpent holding the world
together unclenches its tail
and hisses-and boots and draperies
retreat reluctantly, thundering.

And the cricket thinks:
Well, there must be a rational explanation,
I suppose-but all the same,
it seems bloody queer.

from EXPLORINGS: a collection of poems for the young people of Southern Africa compiled by Robin Malan

Trying to write a sunset without resorting to cliche, I was reminded of a poem today and went in search of it. Turns out that my memory is faulty - there is no sunset in it - but it is still a rather good poem. From EXPLORINGS: A COLLECTION OF POEMS FOR THE YOUNG PEOPLE OF SOUTHERN AFRICA edited by Robin Malan (thanks, mother dear, for introducing me to this all those years ago). Out of print now but still available on amazon and abebooks. The poem in question is WHEN I GO HOME by Damian Ruth:

When I go home
I'm going to find
a stretch of road
in the Karroo
that lies flat and straight for miles.
I will come
over the crest of a koppie
and in the distance see
the windmill and its reservoir
next to the road.

I'll sit on the koppie
and look at it.
On the other side of the earth
under the huge pale blue sky
will be a thin line of purple koppies.
Eventually
I'll hear the insects scratching
and maybe a hot exhausted stone
finally splitting.

I'll walk slowly
towards the windmill,
sometimes on the sticky black asphalt
sometimes next to it,
kicking stones
and lifting puffs of dust.
I'll climb through
the barbwire fence,
strip naked
and swim in the reservoir.
I'll sit in the sun to dry.
After a while
I'll climb back
through the barbwire fence
onto the road again.

I lived in South Africa
for 25 years
and never did that once.

Either we have hope within us
Or we don't.

It is a dimension of the soul, and
Is not particularly dependent
On some observation of the world.

It transcends the world
That is immediately experienced
And is anchored somewhere
Beyond the horizons.

Hope
In the deep and powerful sense
Is not the same as joy
That things are going well
Or willingness to invest in enterprises
That are obviously headed for early success,
But rather the ability to work for something
Because it is good.
Not just because it stands a chance to succeed.

Hope
Is definitely not
The same as optimism.
It is not the conviction
That something will turn out well,
But the certainty
That something makes sense
Regardless of how it turns out.

It is hope
Above all, which gives us the strength to live
And continually try new things.

Vaclav Havel, Living in Truth