Tender is the administration of night
(for the Dutch poet Joop Bersee)
I am Pompeii. There is a map in my hands. I
unearth ancient scrolls. Better the devil you
know. I am all-woman. I am all-man. I am an
alien species and mariner. I am fisherwoman.
Watch how I spear the whale, eat shark flesh,
console the turtle doves at Christmas. I take
the pills and slowly but surely its poison transforms
me into the capacity to live vicariously through
Freud. The nerve damage is there but there is nothing
I can do about it. Like the worker bee. Like
the sea. I just want to be alone. I just want to
complete the task in front of me, ahead of me.
I want to focus all my attention and energy on
it. Leave me be. I need to concentrate. I need
my health. I cry out. No one answers. There’s
no reply. My cry is ignored by the universe.
My cry is not important to anyone else. My matter
is crucified by the silence. I came from particles,
broken images. My sister came from Prague.
The lonely man and the angry woman is my father
and mother. One I love more than the other. I
am the spotted fox, the ghost in this situation. This
equation spells out drama, a bad falling out, but
my father has charisma on his side. My mother
has her wilful beauty. So, we danced to the edge
of the world. My sister wants to teach English in
Prague. That is where she is going for an eternity. She
does not come from broken images. She comes from
rituals and purification, meditation and intention.
And so we move, we play these roles, in the dark.
A time of abundance is coming. You’re the next
Elijah, Elisha, Jeremiah. You’re the next Lumumba,
Soyinka, Achebe, Adichie. It doesn’t matter if
you have your heart set on being man or woman.
I can feel this in my blood. My veins sing your praises.
I worship you. Your river mouth. Your tangled
tongue. Your music is awe-inspiring. Your shipwrecked
hair swims in my hands. Its texture is perfect.
The world breaks and I’m there. You tremble and
I’m there greeting you with love songs and angels.
Abandonment, silence and time
(for the Dutch poet Joop Bersee)
I miss you. I love you. I wish you
were still here. Still think about you. But
now you’re in heaven. Magda, my angel
you’ll always be in my heart. No one stays
forever in this world. We’re all here for a
brief time. She, Magda, was buried there
in a cemetery in Johannesburg, the city she
grew up in as a child. I wish that I had just
had more time to spend with her. Just another
long walk on the beach with the dogs. Sunglasses
perched on her nose, or the two of us eating
cold slices of day-old pizza. She was a
beautiful woman even in her fifties. I remember
hospital visits. Drinking orange juice out
of paper cups. She was the best second-
mother any girl would have wanted, or
wished for. I close my eyes and I hear her
laughter. See her face of love in front of mine.
I remember the light touch of her hands,
think of the year I lived in Swaziland with my uncle
and their two daughters. I’m moth-bitten
by grief for my second mother is now earth.
There’s prayer over her life now. I still cry over you. When
someone that you love passes away there
are five stages of grief they say. One of
them is denial. Denying that this person that
you once loved is gone. Gone to a better place.
I’m trying to remember how she lived her
life. How I’m writing this poem to celebrate her.
The tears come. The tears come, and I let go.
Rage, rage, rage and bitterness
(for the Dutch poet Joop Bersee)
In death beauty is cut away and the body goes
into a cave to dwell there for eternity. Whether
this cave is amidst light or darkness depends
on our sins from our life I suppose. I ponder on
the people that I’ve lost and loved and miss and
I think of the landscape under which they are buried.
Death will change you. Make you feel alive
like vertigo. God grew like a fire around me as
a savage-veil and pure and wounding event.
Her death was a shock. The family gathered
together. Their powers fearless like branches.
The aroma of incense like perfume in the air. I
was not there when prayers were said. When
the people from the church came. And so, we
begin. We begin as math-particles in our mother’s
womb. Once she had young eyes now all she
can see and read is the Braille of cancer being
written on the cells of her body like water vapour.
Her life is becoming frail. Her body delicate.
Her hair once like silk down her back all-gone.
After the diagnosis, after the chemotherapy all
her beautiful hair fell out. I remember the wigs
she wore. I was blind to her pain. Did not visit
near the end of her life. Did not pay my respects
to her husband and boys’ at the funeral. All I
remember is this. That before her tragic death
they removed both of her breasts but the cancer
came back and finally took her life. We all begin
as particles. As math-particles in our mother’s womb
and in the end we’re all buried under mountains.
Welcoming the sweet darkness and all the sacrificial tigers
(for the Dutch poet Joop Bersee)
This is a poem dealing with unbearable things.
If there was still a moment in time for us to
speak face-to-face one last time I’d live for it.
Sell my soul for conversation over a coffee or
red cappuccino in a café. Death can sometimes
be pushed or forced on us. It can make you see
the ghosting-unseen. It can make you linger at
the shop window in a mall. Look for the face that you
loved once not so many moons and suns ago.
A heartsick time fills the hours. You’re not here
anymore. You’re in my head. In a photograph you’re
young and beautiful and free-spirited and not
tied down to a husband and daughters yet. I was
your “adopted” daughter. Loved you like any
biological daughter would love her mother. It’s just a
perfect summer’s day, but you’re not here. You’ve
never met my brother’s son. The sky is timid.
Listening to me and my feelings about death and
my wishful thinking. We humans squander so
much time. I can’t observe or study you anymore,
tell you how much I love and care for you. You’ve
departed from this world never to return. I see
you in visions. Resting in the middle of the afternoon
on your bed worn out with the effort of living.
Depressed, dejected yet still made of life in ways
that were hard for me to understand back then.
I think of all your careful movements as you danced
in the rooms of your house. Here, there is still life
within me while I contemplate the death of you. I see
you everywhere. The shapes you were made of.
Pushcart Prize nominated Abigail George is a South African-based
blogger, essayist, poet, novella and short story writer. She is the
author of eight books. She has lived for most of her life in the Port
Elizabeth area. Her work is forthcoming across Africa in
Africanwriter.com, Bakwa, Jalada, New Coin, New Contrast, the New Ink Review and Nthanda Review. She was born in 1979. Her latest book is “The Scholarship Girl” published by Mwanaka Media and Publishing, a Zimbabwean Publishing House. The book was edited by Tendai Rinos Mwanaka.
