Poem By Antjie Krog
Air. Heir can’t be cured –
I’m bee farmer caught stealing.
Hospitality.
Swallows flit in the air –
Only the houndish-rain can cure me.
The don’t know regret.
The nature of green –
They don’t know the dishes are-waiting.
You keep telling me.
Hours pass in nothings –
Or home. Or harm. Only song.
The other side telling.
I said that just now –
My sister cut her hair. Narrative-repeated.
Looking through a lens.
I can’t leave the house –
Because I’m afraid that people are laughing (at me).
Branches reach for me.
I dream of healing –
But it’s just a mapped out tap-root.
I saw a wo/man.
Called tongue slippage –
Blue night is coming for me.
Yonder it is dark.
Hoping for applause –
Wild seabirds don’t hope for that.
For sonnets, marriage.
My room with a view –
It’s also my prison with-a-view.
Woolf can’t be trusted.
Left me for wide-eyed dead –
My love killed me with one shot.
Raised his rifle wide.
Swum like an otter –
Needed the energy in-my-body.
The stars were needles.
My blood was in tubes –
To test thyroid functioning.
Nurse, leave me alone.
(Wild) visible flowers –
It’s Gustav Mahler in June.
June is my birthday.
Signs of sunflowers –
Joop is a perfectionist.
I’m just obsessive.
Woolf to the lighthouse –
I don’t want to be unseen (anymore).
It is bone season.
With love, and squalor –
I am going mad again.
Shadows of your wings.
Mourning wind and rain –
The non-supportive members of the family.
Hate is a strong word.
My flesh longs for you –
Think of Moses in the wild.
The soul of a wo/man.
Red plum of a spoilt baby –
I think of you, and go mad.
Flush in each cheek bone.
So, I take the anti-depressants –
They call me ‘mental’, ‘black sheep’.
Somehow, that calms me.
This seed, mad life roots –
They go deep, ninja warrior.
Gone-forever to the races.
Despair and hardship –
Photographs make me forget (the haters, the lovers)
The non-reality of pastor.
I long for the wild-and-wilderness –
I read-research-write pamphlets on wellness.
I repeat myself (odd).
This pull-and-push towards health –
Info on the hush of the-art-world (elephants stomping in the room).
Circles in the Knysna-woods.