Church

The empty church was a weekday ghost.

There was a silence in the pews, a dim distance

between door and altar, a vast void of light

between the groaning wooden porch and humming altar flame,

no holy hands turning pious pages,

making signs of the cross, and the airy

vestibules without whispered prayers.

When men and women fled the vaulted halls

of the cathedral, when they closed

the virgin’s eyes, so that she would no longer

bleed miracles, and covered up the tabernacle

in dusty burlap cloth, the gleaming

rainbow light cupped in leaded panes

died, the eyes of apostles and saints

no longer gazed down their prayers

on the ghostly congregation.

What remained was the thick brown backs of idle wooden pews

kneeling before the whispering altar, the silent white marble

and the crackle of candle fat.

Nothing existed without the intoning

benediction of Father Paul,

without the man in weary collared cloth

Nothing was left but the empty belly collection box

and the stone font gone dry, unfingered,

like a smooth and thirsty rock

too weak to cry for water,

a far flung fossil

under the loneliness of deep desert rock.

My Father Crying

I never saw my father crying.

Not even in the bedroom

standing in his dark blue suit,

smart and silent, staring

dry eyed into the mirror

on the day his father died.

When I was two

I saw my father in the hall

perching on a ladder,

cursing through his gritted teeth

the grey glistening globs of plaster

that plopped onto his upturned squinting face.

When I was seven

I saw my father in the living room.

sitting on the yellow easy chair,

clasping his knee with both hands.

throwing back his head,

As he laughed at my silly schoolboy joke.

When I was fourteen

I saw my father in the dining room.

sitting at the wooden table

with clenched fist and twisted mouth

because I, a stubborn adolescent,

refused to give my mother a goodnight kiss.

When I was eighteen

I saw my father in the kitchen

tearing pages with despairing Christian hands

from my saffron Buddhist book

casting them into the purging fire

that he hoped would bring us both back to God.

When I was twenty one

I saw my father in another room

lying still within a box of glass,

his pale body with dented head

wrapped in a white mortuary sheet.

He had never even left a note.

When I was twenty one

I held my father in a plastic flowered room.

Cradling in my weeping arms

his heavy cardboard urn of ash,

suddenly, I saw that my father had been crying,

all his desperate silent years.

You Were There

From my very beginning

You were there

Mopping the blood from the floor

Of the room in which I was born.

Always you were there

Washing our clothes and carrying away our refuse.

You swept the streets we walked along

You dug and weeded the garden we played in

You cleaned the toilet we crapped in.

Always you were there

Waiting in starched-white smiling obedience

With mop and broom and spade

Down on your hands and knees

Doing what every South African mother threatened

She would never do for her own children-

Cleaning up after us.

Always you were there

To dispose of what we found distasteful

Our dust, our refuse, our blood and our excrement

While in the tranquility of that White English paradise

Your hidden flower of anger grew

Slowly and surely as a tumour.

Always you were there

Weary of our shit

Hungry for our blood.

Blue Lagoon 1965

On Sunday afternoon

down by the Blue Lagoon

you could buy go-kart ride

or a take-away of curry and rice

and watch dark-skinned fishermen

catch wriggling silver shad

on bending bamboo rods

in the muddy turbulence

of the brown Umgeni River

as it surged into the sea.

Within the gaping river’s mouth,

ancient sharks with razor teeth

fed on the offal tide of Africa

a few feet from the children playing

on the asphalt quay amongst

the crumpled scraps of newspaper

and bloodied scraps of sardine bait.

A Sense of Humour

The psychiatrist Victor Frankyl

tells a story of how prisoners at Auschwitz

were moved by train to Dachau.

The journey took three days,

during which time they were frozen

and half-starved.

At Dachau they had to stand

in the freezing rain all night

because someone had missed the roll call

and yet , Frankyl said,

they were all relaxed and happy,

laughing and joking because

Dachau had no incinerator chimney.

My Father Loved Pigeons

My father loved pigeons.

He kept them and bred them

Ever since he was a child.

He built his own cages

From wooden packing cases,

Black creosote poles

And silver wire mesh.

We always had a pigeon loft in our garden.

My father would spend hours

Sitting in a chair, smoking

And looking at his pigeons.

Then one day he gave away

All his precious pigeons until he was

The only pigeon left all alone.

He dismantled his loft

Dismembering plank and pole and wire.

Then he perched upon an apartment roof

And launched himself into wingless flight.

Weary from too much flying

He fixed his navigating heart

Upon the guiding stars

And let instinct and gravity

Take him home.