Long-Nailed Girl, Waitress, with Music
(In the Alfama, Lisbon)

Long-nailed girl, waitress
And that with long dark hair -eucalyptus stone wall coloured
Music of her mouth

I say praise to venom
Hymns to turning everything backwards
Glorious ant! Mighty leaf! Huge
Apple of her tongue!

And with that long dark hair
Tying its swish to my wrist
And with that long nail
Varnished to that wing
Beating its way through that song

Oh, I don't care about that flap of death
Or that lost eyelid, that round whip-lash
Circling that blind man's head

Nor do I care if the sea turns to love at my door
            its foaming devastation

Provided that

The long-nailed girl and that with long dark hair
Does not shift one iota the exclamation mark in the headline
Nor touch too deeply
The wounded wall

Man at Hout Bay


I was born without even a spider of memory

My shadow absorbed me

And my name
Never named me

2 pennies
Bolted when they saw me

My birth
Hung in the trees
for days after my birth

My eyes
became blind
with their own seeing

I am nothing. Have nothing

But sometimes
I feel God lifting me up in his hands
And staring at me